Mobile Agent Communication, Security Concerns, and Approaches: An Insight into Different Kinds of Vulnerabilities a Mobile Agent Could Be Subjected to and Measures to Control Them

Introduction

A mobile agent can be termed as a unique type of mobile code. A mobile agent is a kind of a program that migrates from one host to another in a distributed network mobile agent. It has many advantages over existing distributed techniques like optimum resource utilization, minimize network traffic etc(Bhanot, R., & Hans, R.,2015). A Mobile Agent exhibits the following characteristics:

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  Mobility: Mobility is a characteristic which allows a mobile agent to jump from one node to another. During this traversal, the mobile agent can perform any communication processes.

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  Independent: An independent or autonomous Mobile Agent can take its own decision or act on behalf of another mobile agent.

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  Communication: A mobile agent can talk to another mobile agent, fixed or mobile servers and other client systems.

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  Learning: A mobile agent is known to be ‘smart’ that gains knowledge from its past experience and changes its behaviour accordingly.

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  Interoperability: Mobile agents have property to execute on different platform or over different clients and adapt to changes in the environment.

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  Persistence: Mobile agent has no need to establish continuous connection for execution of programs.

Security Threats In A Mobile Agent System

Belal Amro(2014) categorizes the security threats faced by a Mobile Agent System into four broad categories: threats due to a mobile agent harming an agent platform, a mobile agent attacking another mobile agent, an agent platform attacking a mobile agent and finally outside entities harming the mobile agent system. The fourth category includes threats when an agent harms a destination platform or one agent platform attacking another platform. The threats mentioned above have their analogues in a typical client-server system and have taken place in the past.