Skip to main content
Log in

Mobile Agent Protection with Self-Modifying Code

  • Published:
Journal of Signal Processing Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Mobile agent is widely used in area such as parallel distributed computing for higher performance. But security issues threaten both the algorithm and data running on mobile agent system. The sensitive information within mobile agent code is inclined to be reverse engineered on a host platform. Obfuscation provides effective protection in this case with little execution time and storage size overhead. In this paper, we propose an obfuscation algorithm based on self-modifying code to prevent mobile agent code from attack at function level. We implement the algorithm and prove the efficacy of the algorithm.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Wang, C., Davidson, J., Hill, J., & Knight, J. (2001). Protection of software-based survivability mechanisms. In Proc. international conference of dependable systems and networks.

  2. Wang, C. (2000). A security architecture for survivability mechanisms. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia.

  3. Anckaert, B., Madou, M., De Sutter, B., De Bus, B., De Bosschere, K., & Preneel, B. (2007). Program obfuscation: A quantitative approach. In Proceedings of the 2007 ACM workshop on quality of protection (pp. 15–20). New York: ACM.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Majumdar, A., & Thomborson, C. (2006). Interpreting opacity in the context of information-hiding and obfuscation in distributed systems. In 2006 IEEE region 10 conference TENCON 2006 (pp. 1–4).

  5. Borselius, N. (2002). Mobile agent security. Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal, 14(5), 211–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. D’Anna, L., Matt, B., Reisse, A., Van Vleck, T., Schwab, S., & LeBlanc, P. (2001). Self-protecting mobile agents obfuscation report (pp. 3–15). Final report, Network Associates Laboratories Report.

  7. Farmer, W., Guttman, J., & Swarup, V. (1996). Security for mobile agents: Issues and requirements. In Proceedings of the 19th national information systems security conference (Vol. 2, pp. 591–597). Citeseer.

  8. Schelderup, K., & Olnes, J. (1999). Mobile agent security-issues and directions. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1597, 155–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wang, C., Hill, J., Knight, J., & Davidson, J. (2000). Software tamper resistance: Obstructing static analysis of programs. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bhatkar, S., DuVarney, D., & Sekar, R. (2003). Address obfuscation: An efficient approach to combat a board range of memory error exploits. In Proceedings of the 12th conference on USENIX security symposium (Vol. 12, p. 8). Berkeley: USENIX Association.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kruegel, C., Robertson, W., Valeur, F., & Vigna, G. (2004). Static disassembly of obfuscated binaries. In Proceedings of the 13th conference on USENIX security symposium (Vol. 13, p. 18). Berkeley: USENIX Association.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Drape, S. (2007). Generalising the array split obfuscation. Information Sciences, 177(1), 202–219.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Sosonkin, M., Naumovich, G., & Memon, N. (2003). Obfuscation of design intent in object-oriented applications. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM workshop on digital rights management (pp. 142–153). New York: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Brzozowski, M., & Yarmolik, V. (2007). Obfuscation as intellectual rights protection in VHDL language. In 6th international conference on computer information systems and industrial management applications, 2007. CISIM’07 (pp. 337–340).

  15. Liu, F., Lu, B., & Luo, X. (2006). A chaos-based robust software watermarking. In Information security practice and experience: second international conference, ISPEC 2006, Hangzhou, China, 11–14 April 2006: Proceedings (p. 355). New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Popov, I., Debray, S., & Andrews, G. (2007). Binary obfuscation using signals. In Proceedings of 16th USENIX security symposium on USENIX security symposium table of contents. Berkeley: USENIX Association.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ge, J., Chaudhuri, S., & Tyagi, A.: Control flow based obfuscation. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM workshop on digital rights management (pp. 83–92). New York: ACM.

  18. Linn, C., & Debray, S. (2003). Obfuscation of executable code to improve resistance to static disassembly. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on computer and communications security (pp. 290–299). New York: ACM.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Majumdar, A., & Thomborson, C. (2006). Manufacturing opaque predicates in distributed systems for code obfuscation. In Proceedings of the 29th Australasian computer science conference (Vol. 48, pp. 187–196). Darlinghurst: Australian Computer Society.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Madou, M., Anckaert, B., Moseley, P., Debray, S., De Sutter, B., & De Bosschere, K. (2006). Software protection through dynamic code mutation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3786, 194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Shan, L., & Emmanuel, S. (2009). Protection of DRM agent codes. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Pacific-rim conference on multimedia. LNCS (Vol. 5879, pp. 743–754). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Anckaert, B., Madou, M., & De Bosschere, K. (2007). A model for self-modifying code. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4437, 232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liang Shan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Shan, L., Emmanuel, S. Mobile Agent Protection with Self-Modifying Code. J Sign Process Syst 65, 105–116 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-010-0548-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-010-0548-8

Keywords

Navigation