An enhanced approach for securing mobile agents from

IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308
AN ENHANCED APPROACH FOR SECURING MOBILE AGENTS FROM
THE ATTACK OF OTHER MALICIOUS MOBILE AGENTS
Asha Anil1, Jesna Anver2
1PG Student, 2Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Toc H Institute of Science and
Technology, Kerala, India
Abstract
The area of mobile agent security is in a state of immaturity, but rapidly improving. Emphasis is beginning to move toward developing
techniques that are oriented towards protecting the agent. Agent technology has been used in many critical applications like business
process management, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, distributed processing etc. The mobile agent technology has encountered
many security threats during the itinerary period .The security schemes presented in this paper for mobile agent address the code,
data and itinerary security issues. An environment that protects the legitimate mobile agent from the malicious mobile agent is
provided. A checksum method is used to detect a malicious mobile agent which is appending to a legitimate mobile agent. The
confidentiality of the data that are retrieved from each remote server is ensured by encryption mechanisms. The itinerary is also
protected by allowing only registered users to create new mobile agents and is controlled by a central co-coordinator. Thus an
enhanced security mechanism is presented to protect the mobile agent’s code, data and route.
Keywords: Mobile Agent, Security Threats, Central Co-ordinator, Checksum Method
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1. INTRODUCTION
A software agent is program that acts as a user’s personal
assistant and is classified as static agents and mobile agents.
Static agents execute on a single machine to achieve their goal
Software agents which have the property of mobility are called
mobile agents and they perform a user’s task by migrating and
executing on several hosts connected to the network. Mobility
increases the functionality of the mobile agent and allows the
mobile agent to perform tasks beyond the scope of static
agents. An agent is defined as “a person whose job is to act
for, or manage the affairs of, other people. In the context of
computers, software agents refer to programs that perform
certain tasks on behalf of the user. Imagine that we want to go
on a trip to a new holiday destination. We contact your travel
agent program and describe our preferences and our
constraints. The program suggests where we can spend our
holidays after taking into consideration several information
sources such as flight timings, guides and verifying the
availability of tickets and hotel rooms etc. When we confirm
our destination, the program books the flight tickets and
reserves the hotel rooms for us. Thus the software agent acts
as our personal assistant and they exhibit certain properties,
such as: autonomy – they act without the need of constant
human supervision, sociability – the ability to interact with
other agents if necessary, reactivity – ability to react to
changes in the environment, proactivity – taking initiative at
needed times, in order to reach objectives.
2. RELATED WORKS
The existing system provides mobile agent authentication at
each host. This ensures that the mobile agent is dispatched by
the intended sender only. But the integrity of the code is not
guaranteed. Any receiver can confirm the identity of the
sender but not the content of the code. There is a possibility of
malicious mobile agent appending itself with the legitimate
mobile agent without modifying or altering the contents of the
code. The verifying process only verifies for sender's
authentication and not the integrity of code. In overall there is
a lack in available security system that provides security for
itinerary details, data and particularly mobile agents' code.
Also in the existing system, there is no mechanism for
authentication checking and the agent verification is done
through checking agent size. If the agent size exceeds a
particular limit, kill that agent. But it may not be suitable in all
cases.
Over the years computer systems have evolved from
centralized monolithic computing devices supporting static
applications, into networked environments that allow complex
forms of distributed computing. A new phase of evolution is
now under way based on software agents.
A software agent is loosely defined as a program that can
exercise an individual’s or organization's authority, work
autonomously toward a goal, and meet and interact with other
agents.
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Volume: 03 Special Issue: 01 | NC-WiCOMET-2014 | Mar-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 16

Wayne A. Jansen et al. [1] proposed a number of models exist
for describing agent system, however, for discussing security
issues it is sufficient to use a very simple one, consisting of
only two main components: the agent and the agent platform
and have summarized the various methods devised for
protecting the agent platform such as Software-Based Fault
Isolation, Safe Code Interpretation, Signed Code, State
Appraisal, Proof Carrying Code etc and more general-purpose
techniques for protecting an agents such as Host Revocation
Authority, Execution Tracing ,Obfuscated Code, Ajanta
System, Partial Result Encapsulation, Environment Key
Generation etc.
Ibharalu et.al [2] proposed reliable protection architecture
using Travel Diary Protection Scheme and Platform Registry
which allows and protects mobile agents to roam freely in
open networks environment without being attacked by
malicious hosts. The paper focuses on securing free-roaming
agents in open network environments and presents a novel
security protocol which has fine function in preventing
attacks. J.M.Gnanasekar et.al [3] has proposed a number of
solutions for securing data section in a mobile agent from
discovery and exploitation by a malicious host are proposed
based on cryptographic principles have their own limitations.
The cryptographic key generation and distribution mechanism
strongly holds the success of the mobile agent security
systems. The agents and hosts are mutually distrusting each
other, but they trust the third parties. In the paper [3], this
property is exploited for the secure way of generating and
distributing the keys using service oriented architecture. The
major security future for mobile agent, the Publicly Verifiable
and Forward Integrity (PVFI) and Forward Privacy (FP) are
also ensured.
Tarig Mohamed et.al in [4] has proposed a Secure-Image
Mechanism (SIM) to protect mobile agents against malicious
hosts. SIM aims to protect mobile agent by using the
symmetric encryption and hash function in cryptography
science. This mechanism can prevent the eavesdropping and
alteration attacks. The main benefit of this mechanism is to
allow the mobile agent to continue its journey without
problem in case these types of attacks occurred. The paper [4]
presents some solution proposed by research in the area of the
mobile agent protection and explains the symmetric
encryption and hash function concept.
Abolfazl esfandi et.al in [5] has proposed a mobile agent
security in multi agent environments using a multi agent-multi
key approach .In paper [5] they consider the problem of
keeping sensitive data and algorithms contained in a mobile
agent from discovery and exploitation by a malicious host.
They illustrate a novel distributed protocol for multi agent
environments to improve the communication security in
packet switched networks. To enrich the overall system
security the approach makes use of distribution and double
encryption and some other traditional methods such as digital
signature. In this approach the encrypted private key and the
message are broken into different parts carrying by different
agents which makes it difficult for malicious entities to mine
the private key for message encryption, while the private key
for the encrypted key is allocated on the predetermined
destination nodes. On the other hand, all of the previously
proposed encryption algorithms can be applied in their
proposed approach that deteriorates the key discovery process.
To improve the overall security, the paper makes use of
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) as the encryption base
for message encryption. The paper also presents some
evaluation discussions presenting time overhead analysis and
crack probability.
Muhammad Awais Shibli et.al [6] has proposed MAGICNET:
security system for development, validation and adoption of
mobile agents .The research in the area of mobile agents’
security mainly deals with protection and security for agents
and agents’ runtime platforms. Sarwarul et.al [7] has proposed
a mechanism for security of mobile agent in ad hoc network
using threshold cryptography .One of the main advantages of
using Mobile Agent in a network is it reduces network traffic
load. In an ad hoc network Mobile Agent can be used to
protect the network by using agent based IDS
.Tarig mohamed et .al [8] has proposed a sub-agent
mechanism to protect mobile agent privacy this paper a new
mechanism called Generated Sub-Agent Mechanism (GSAM)
to protect mobile agent against malicious Hosts The main idea
behind GSMA is to generate a sub-mobile agent from the
mobile agent in case the mobile agent will visit an untrusted
host. The sub-mobile agent visits the untrusted host instead of
the mobile agent.
M. Vigilson Prem et.al [9] has proposed agent sizing method
to prevent the entry of a malicious mobile agent. . But it is not
suitable for most of the cases as a malicious agent with the
same size may get attached to the legitimate mobile agent.
3. EXISTING SYSTEM
In the existing system, verification was done with the help of
agent sizing. If the size of mobile along with the data is larger
than the critical section buffer, it is expelled out of the system.
The mobile agent was kept in 'deactivated' state while this
check is performed. This restricts the mobile agent not to
perform any malicious action inside the host and thus protects
the host platform from malicious activities of mobile agent. In
case, the mobile agent fails this test, it is killed immediately
inside the critical section itself. Further, at this stage only, the
append entry attack is detected. If there is an increase in size
of the agent against the size fixed at the sender's side, illegal
entry of mobile code is detected.
On detecting this attack, the mobile agent is destroyed
immediately based on malicious reasons. Otherwise the
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mobile agent is allowed to execute in its execution
environment.ie, here agent verification is done through
checking agent size. If the agent size exceeds a particular
limit, kill that agent. But it is not suitable for most of the cases
as an malicious agent with the same size may get attached to
the legitimate mobile agent either by deleting some parts of it
or by replacing the agent.
4. PROPOSED SYSTEM
Our proposed system provides an environment that protects
the legitimate mobile agent from the malicious mobile agent.
The general architecture of the system for an information
retrieval application with fault tolerant and security model is
shown in figure 1. Web service is requested to plan and select
dynamically, the next host to visit, based on parameters like
size of data, aliveness, bandwidth. The authorized user
submits his request, for example, an information retrieval
request, to the mobile agent system. The agent creator creates
the agent and the agent verification, data verification and path
management are done by web service module. If verified, the
data collection or actions if any are performed and the agent
migrates to the next host and reaches back to the end user On
arrival at each host, the mobile agent undergoes security check
and on success the mobile agent is allowed to execute in the
environment.
Fig -1: Overall architecture of the proposed system
4.1 Authentication Checking
The modified system proceeds using following steps
a. Creating Mobile Agents: - only registered users can
create mobile agents
b. Agent Registration: - After creating mobile agents,
mobile agents are registered to central mobile coordinator.
During registration phase, creator send agent checksum,
agent name, migration path are sent to this coordinator
c. Modify Mobile Agent Running platform :- In existing
system, running environment checking agent size only for
verification. But in our new environment, after receiving a
mobile agent, the running environment sent its checksum
and agent code to central coordinator. Central coordinator
checks its integrity and status code to running
environment. If this is a success, then running
environment start mobile agent otherwise kills that agent
4.2 Checksum Method
The agent creator creates a mobile agent, and find its
corresponding checksum and send the checksum to the central
coordinator. It also sends the new path to the central
coordinator if any new path change is found. The agent
observer is a server that is distributed over different regions
and its function is to monitor the movement of mobile agent in
its corresponding region. It also acts as a service provider that
services the requests related to those mobile agents. The
agents generated at each host must be registered with agent
observer and only the registered mobile agents are allowed to
access the critical section. On successful completion of the
task, the mobile agent is dispatched to next host after finding
the proper host to migrate.
Following are the main steps of Agent Observer
a. Create an agent Observer
b. Receive messages from mobile agents
After the agent observer check authentication of request and
sender agent, it returns data corresponding to agent request
4.3 Data Collection and Protection
The data collected from one server must be secure and should
not be known to others. To implement this constraint, every
server will encrypt its data using the owner's public key. The
owner's public key is obtained by decrypting the segment
received from previous server using receiver's private key and
each data packet is encrypted using owner's public key. At the
same time, the data packet can be decrypted only by the owner
and these packets can only be opened in the correct order,
since the symmetric key used to decrypt an envelope is
protected inside the previous packet
The data packet received by any receiver is encrypted using
owner's public key .On successful completion of task, the
mobile agent appends the result with this packet and the new
look packet is encrypted again using owner's public key
Also a checksum is also calculated for the data to provide
additional security so that upon receiving the node where the
data is collected it can check the integrity of the data by this
new method
4.4 Path Migration
The web service is the central coordinator who keeps track of
the path changes and holds the value of checksum of mobile
agent.The details about the next host to be visited is controlled
_______________________________________________________________________________________

by the web service. Also the web service keeps track of the
path modification if any in a dynamic itinerary
5. WORKING OF THE PROPOSED MODEL
The entire working of our system with data and Agent
verification is illustrated by a block diagram in Fig 2. The
entire working of our system with data and Agent verification
is illustrated by a block diagram in Fig 2.The figure describes
how an agent is created, verified, and migrated. The agent is
verified by a checksum mechanism and the data collected is
also secured by a series of encryption mechanisms. Also the
next path to be taken is obtained from the web server or the
central coordinator and ultimately reaches the end user.
Fig -2: Block Diagram of the entire system
5.1 Algorithm
Step 1: Create a mobile agent by a registered user.
Step 2: Register the mobile agents with the web server.
Step 3: Verify the authenticity of agent with the help of
checksum method
Step 4: Perform the operation required or collect the data from
the intermediate hosts and encrypt the data by any encryption
mechanism
Step 5: Verify the data collected.
Step 6: Obtain the next path from the central coordinator and
choose the next host to be visited.
Step 7: Perform Agent Migration
Step 8: Stop
6. CONCLUSIONS
The area of mobile agent security is in a state of immaturity,
but rapidly improving. The traditional orientation toward host-based
security persists and, therefore, available protection
mechanisms tend to focus on protecting the agent platform.
Emphasis is beginning to move toward developing techniques
that are oriented toward protecting the agent, a much more
difficult problem. There are a number of agent-based
application domains for which basic and conventional security
techniques should prove adequate mobile agent technology is
intriguing and offers a new paradigm for application
development
Agent technology has been used in many critical applications
such as personal information management, electronic
commerce, business process management, artificial
intelligence, interface design, distributed processing and
distributed algorithms. Besides its bright side, the technology
has encountered many security threats. These problems are
faced during the itinerary period of an agent traversing from
platform to platform in the network. The unexpected failure or
change in network components or status makes the static
planning not a best option and makes the mobile agent users to
opt for dynamic itinerary. But the problem is that the itinerary
details are open to all hosts. But for secure transaction
applications, the itinerary details must not be known to any
other hosts in the network
The data collected from each host must be protected from any
other host .Only the owner of the agent is allowed to decrypt
the encrypted data at each host. More importantly, the existing
provides mobile agent authentication at each host. This
ensures that the mobile agent is dispatched by the intended
sender only. But the integrity of the code is not guaranteed.
Any receiver can confirm the identity of the sender but not the
content of the code. There is a possibility of malicious mobile
agent appending itself with the legitimate mobile agent
without modifying or altering the contents of the code. The
verifying process only verifies for sender's authentication and
not the integrity of code. In overall there is a lack in available
security system that provides security for itinerary details, data
and particularly mobile agents' code. This situation has given
the motivation to present a three dimensional security model
that protects mobile agent from malicious agents' passive
attack, data and itinerary details from executing hosts
In our proposed system we are providing security for agent’s
code, data as well as path through a series of encryption
mechanism. The code of the mobile agent is verified by a two
level verification schemes. The authentication is verified at
first level by a registration mechanism and the integrity of
code is verified at second level by checksum method. This
ensures that the mobile agent is not affected by other
malicious mobile agent. Further, the itinerary is protected to
ensure the secure transaction of data. Finally the data collected
_______________________________________________________________________________________

is secured by using cryptographic methods to ensure the
integrity of data. The proposed model protects the mobile
agent from other malicious mobile agents in the platform.
REFERENCES
[1]. W. Jansen, "Countermeasures for mobile agent security",
Computer Communication, Special issue on Advances in
Research and Application of Network Security, November
2000.
[2]. Ibharalu F. T., Sofoluwe A.B., Akinwale A. T., "A
reliable protection architecture for mobile agents in open
network system", International journal of computer
applications, Volume 17, Issue 7, pp.6-14, 2011.
[3]. J.M.Gnanasekar and V. Ramachandran, "Distributed
cryptographic key management for mobile agent security",
International journal of recent trends in engineering, Volume
I, Issue I, pp.164-167, 2009.
[4]. Traig Mohammad Ahmed, "Using secure-image
mechanism to protect mobile agent against malicious host",
WASET, Volume 59,pp. 82-91,2009.
[5]. Esfandi, A, Rahimabadi, AM., "Mobile agent security in
multi agent environment using a multi agent multi key
approach", Proceedings of 2nd IEEE International Conference
on Computer Science and Information Technology,
ICCSIT'09, pp. 438 - 442, 2009
[6]. Shibli, M.A.; Muftic, S.; Giambruno, A; Lioy, A,
"MagicNET Security system for development, validation and
adoption of mobile agents", Proceedings of 3rd International
Conference on Network and system security, pp.389-396,
2009.
[7]. S.M. Sarwarul Islam, Zinat S, Bo Sun, Md. Washiqul
Islam, "Security of mobile agent in Ad Hoc network using
threshold cryptography" ,WASET, Volume 70, pp.424-427,
2010.
[8]. Tarig Mohamed Ahmed, PhD, “Generate Sub-Agent
Mechanism to Protect Mobile Agent Privacy”, 2012 IEEE
Symposium on Computers and Informatics.
[9]. M. Vigilson Prem and S. Swamynathan,”Securing Mobile
Agent and its Platform from Passive Attack of Malicious
Mobile Agents”, IEEE-International Conference on Advances
In Engineering, Science And Management (ICAESM -2012)
March 30, 31, 2012
BIOGRAPHIES
Asha Anil was born in Kerala India. She
received B.Tech in Computer Science from
College of Engineering Munnar in the year
2007 and is currently pursuing M.Tech in
Computer Science with Specialization in Data
Security in Toc H Institute of Science and
Technology. She has nearly 5 years of experience including
industry and teaching .Her areas of interest include Data
Security, Automata, Computer Graphics and her research
interest includes Data and Network Security.
Jesna Anver was born in Kerala, India. She
receieved B.Tech from Model Engineering
College, Thrikkakara in the year 2003 and
M.Tech from Amrita University Coimbatore
and is currently doing research in Cochin
University of Science and Technology under the Dept of
Electronics. She has nearly 10 years of teaching experience
and is currently working as Associate Professor in Toc H
Institute of Science and Technology under Computer Science
Dept. Her areas of interest include Image Processing, Machine
Learning Networking and Signal Processing
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