SAS : A Secure Aglet Server

Despite the fact that mobile agents have received increasing attention in various research efforts, the use of the paradigm in practical applications has yet to fully emerge. With the presence of infrastructure to support the development of mobile agent applications, security concerns act as the primary deterrent against such trends. Numerous studies have been conducted to address the security issues of mobile agents with a strong focus on the theoretical aspect of the problem. This work attempts to bridge the gap from theory to practice by analyzing the security mechanisms available in Aglet. We herein propose several mechanisms, stemming from theoretical advancements, intended to protect both agents and hosts in order to foster the development of business applications that fully exploit the benefits of agent technology. The proposed mechanisms lay the foundation for implementation of application specific protocols dotted with access control, secured communication and ability to detect tampering of agent data. We demonstrate our contribution through application scenarios of a prototyped Information Retrieval system.