Building Secure Mobile Agents: The Supervisor-Worker Framework

Servers being visited by mobile agents are often a target of an attack. The mobile agent might steal resources, confidential data or use the server as starting point for a new attack. Accordingly many researchers devote their time to this area. However, another main problem of mobile agent security is nearly neglected: the attack of a malicious server against a mobile agent. The server can steal resources and confidential data, too. Due to the fact that the server has in general no access restrictions this problem is even harder to attack. This thesis presents a solution for this particular aspect of mobile agent security: the Supervisor-Worker Framework. The evaluation of the framework and the case study application showed that the framework effectively prevents tampering and eavesdropping and, additionally, boosts several other key aspects of mobile agents.