An Approach to Secure Mobile Agent Communication in Multi-Agent Systems
Authors: Olumide Simeon Ogunnusi, Shukor Abd Razak, Michael Kolade Adu
Abstract:
Inter-agent communication manager facilitates communication among mobile agents via message passing mechanism. Until now, all Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) compliant agent systems are capable of exchanging messages following the standard format of sending and receiving messages. Previous works tend to secure messages to be exchanged among a community of collaborative agents commissioned to perform specific tasks using cryptosystems. However, the approach is characterized by computational complexity due to the encryption and decryption processes required at the two ends. The proposed approach to secure agent communication allows only agents that are created by the host agent server to communicate via the agent communication channel provided by the host agent platform. These agents are assumed to be harmless. Therefore, to secure communication of legitimate agents from intrusion by external agents, a 2-phase policy enforcement system was developed. The first phase constrains the external agent to run only on the network server while the second phase confines the activities of the external agent to its execution environment. To implement the proposed policy, a controller agent was charged with the task of screening any external agent entering the local area network and preventing it from migrating to the agent execution host where the legitimate agents are running. On arrival of the external agent at the host network server, an introspector agent was charged to monitor and restrain its activities. This approach secures legitimate agent communication from Man-in-the Middle and Replay attacks.
Keywords: Agent communication, introspective agent, isolation of agent, policy enforcement system.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1474607
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 635References:
[1] Singh, Parwinder, & Malhotra, Mrs Sheenam. (2013). Trends in Mobile Agent Communication for Mobile Networks. International Journal, 3(5).
[2] Cavalcante, Rodolfo Carneiro, Bittencourt, Ig Ibert, da Silva, Alan Pedro, Silva, Marlos, Costa, Evandro, & Santos, Robério. (2012). A survey of security in multi-agent systems. Expert Systems with Applications, 39(5), 4835-4846.
[3] Lee, Xuan Hung, Khalid, Murad, Sankar, Ravi, & Lee, Sungyoung. (2011). An efficient mutual authentication and access control scheme for wireless sensor networks in healthcare. Journal of Networks, 6(3), 355-364.
[4] Kandil, Heba, & Atwan, Ahmed. (2014). Mobile agents' authentication using a proposed light Kerberos system. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS).
[5] Niklas Borselius and Chris J. Mitchell (2003). Securing FIPA agent communication. In H. R. Arabnia and Y. Mun, editors, Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Security and Management (SAM’03), Vol. 1, pages 135–141. CSREA Press, Nevada.
[6] Hu, Yuh-Jong, & Tang, Chao-Wei. (2003). Agent-oriented public key infrastructure for multi-agent E-service. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, pp 114–136.
[7] Novak, P., Rollo, M., Hodik, J., & Vlcek, T. (2003). Communication security in multi-agent systems. Multi-Agent Systems and Applications III, Proceedings, 2691, 454-463.
[8] Quillinan, Thomas B, Warnier, Martijn, Oey, Michel, Timmer, Reinier, & Brazier, Frances. (2008). Enforcing security in the agentscape middleware. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2008 workshop on Middleware security.
[9] Xiao-Long, Xu, Jing-Yi, Xiong, & Chun-Ling, Cheng. (2010). The model and the security mechanism of the information retrieval system based on mobile multi-agent. Paper presented at the 12th IEEE nternationalConference on Communication Techology (ICCT).
[10] Sulaiman, Rossilawati, & Sharma, Dharmendra. (2011). Enhancing security in e-health services using agent. Paper presented at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (ICEEI).
[11] Sulaiman, Rossilawati, Huang, Xu, & Sharma, Dharmendra. (2009). E-health services with secure mobile agent. Paper presented at the 7th Annual Communication Networks and Services Research Conference, pp 270-277.
[12] Krishnalal, G, & Babu, Jisha. (2013). A Secure Data Transmission For Multiagent System Using Digital Signature. Paper presented at the International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology, pp 4-7.
[13] Ben Ameur, Sirine, Zarai, Faouzi, Smaoui, Salima, Obaidat, Mohammad S, & Hsiao, KF. (2014). A lightweight mutual authentication mechanism for improving fast PMIPV6-based network mobility scheme. Paper presented at the 4th IEEE International Conference on Network Infrastructure and Digital Content (IC-NIDC).
[14] Venkatesan, S, & Chellappan, C. (2008). Protection of mobile agent platform through attack identification scanner (AIS) by malicious identification police (MIP). Paper presented at the First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, 2008. ICETET'08.
[15] Venkatesan, S, Chellappan, C, Vengattaraman, T, Dhavachelvan, P, & Vaish, Anurika. (2010). Advanced mobile agent security models for code integrity and malicious availability check. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 33(6), 661-671.
[16] Bellifemine, Fabio, Caire, Giovanni, Trucco, Tiziana, Rimassa, Giovanni, & Mungenast, Roland. (2003). Jade administrator’s guide. TILab (February 2006).