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D’Agents: Security in a Multiple-Language, Mobile-Agent System

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Mobile Agents and Security

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1419))

Abstract

Mobile-agent systems must address three security issues: protecting an individual machine, protecting a group of machines, and protecting an agent. In this chapter, we discuss these three issues in the context of D’Agents, a mobile-agent system whose agents can be written in Tcl, Java and Scheme. (D’Agents was formerly known as Agent Tcl.) First we discuss mechanisms existing in D’Agents for protecting an individual machine: (1) cryptographic authentication of the agent’s owner, (2) resource managers that make policy decisions based on the owner’s identity, and (3) secure execution environments for each language that enforce the decisions of the resource managers. Then we discuss our planned market-based approach for protecting machine groups. Finally we consider several (partial) solutions for protecting an agent from a malicious machine.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Robert S. Gray & George Cybenko

  2. Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    David Kotz & Daniela Rus

Authors
  1. Robert S. Gray
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  2. David Kotz
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  3. George Cybenko
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  4. Daniela Rus
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-5110, USA

    Giovanni Vigna

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gray, R.S., Kotz, D., Cybenko, G., Rus, D. (1998). D’Agents: Security in a Multiple-Language, Mobile-Agent System. In: Vigna, G. (eds) Mobile Agents and Security. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1419. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-68671-1_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-68671-1_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64792-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68671-2

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