Protecting mobile agents against malicious hosts.

by Sau-Koon Ng.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-112).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Evolution of the mobile agent paradigm --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- Terminology --- p.5Chapter 1.3 --- Beneficial aspects --- p.7Chapter 1.3.1 --- Autonomy --- p.7Chapter 1.3.2 --- Client customization --- p.8Chapter 1.3.3 --- Attendant and real time interactions --- p.8Chapter 1.4 --- Fundamental deployment bottleneck: security concern --- p.9Chapter 1.4.1 --- Risking the mobile agent hosts --- p.10Chapter 1.4.2 --- Risking the mobile agents --- p.11Chapter 1.4.3 --- The difficult problem --- p.12Chapter 1.5 --- Contribution of this thesis --- p.13Chapter 1.6 --- Structure of the thesis --- p.14Chapter 2 --- Understanding attacks and defense --- p.15Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.15Chapter 2.2 --- Understanding attacks --- p.16Chapter 2.2.1 --- The meaning of an attack --- p.16Chapter 2.2.2 --- An abstract model of attacks --- p.17Chapter 2.2.3 --- A survey of various attacks --- p.21Chapter 2.3 --- Understanding defense --- p.25Chapter 2.3.1 --- The meaning of defense --- p.25Chapter 2.3.2 --- Security requirements of defense --- p.26Chapter 2.3.3 --- A survey of protection schemes --- p.28Chapter 2.4 --- Concluding remarks --- p.40Chapter 3 --- Confidentiality in mobile agent systems --- p.42Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.42Chapter 3.2 --- Motivations --- p.43Chapter 3.2.1 --- Program comprehension --- p.44Chapter 3.2.2 --- Black-box testing --- p.45Chapter 3.3 --- Theory --- p.46Chapter 3.3.1 --- Assumptions --- p.46Chapter 3.3.2 --- Entropy of mobile agents --- p.46Chapter 3.3.3 --- Intention spreading by insertion --- p.49Chapter 3.3.4 --- Intention shrinking by splitting --- p.52Chapter 3.3.5 --- Nested spreading and shrinking --- p.55Chapter 3.4 --- Implementation possibilities --- p.55Chapter 3.4.1 --- Addition of irrelevant variables and conditional statements --- p.55Chapter 3.4.2 --- Splitting the cost function --- p.60Chapter 3.5 --- Security analysis --- p.63Chapter 3.5.1 --- Human inspection --- p.63Chapter 3.5.2 --- Automatic program comprehension --- p.64Chapter 3.6 --- Related work --- p.66Chapter 3.6.1 --- Time limited blackbox security --- p.66Chapter 3.6.2 --- Computing with encrypted function --- p.66Chapter 3.7 --- Applicability --- p.67Chapter 3.8 --- Further considerations --- p.68Chapter 3.8.1 --- Weaknesses --- p.68Chapter 3.8.2 --- Relationship with other approaches --- p.69Chapter 3.8.3 --- Further development --- p.71Chapter 3.9 --- Concluding remarks --- p.71Chapter 4 --- Anonymity in mobile agent systems --- p.73Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.73Chapter 4.2 --- Solutions to anonymity --- p.74Chapter 4.2.1 --- Mixing --- p.75Chapter 4.2.2 --- Group signatures --- p.76Chapter 4.3 --- Anonymous agents --- p.78Chapter 4.3.1 --- Anonymous connection --- p.78Chapter 4.3.2 --- Anonymous communication --- p.79Chapter 4.4 --- Concluding remarks --- p.84Chapter 5 --- Open issues --- p.86Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.86Chapter 5.2 --- Security issues --- p.86Chapter 5.2.1 --- Reachable problems --- p.87Chapter 5.2.2 --- Difficult problems --- p.88Chapter 5.3 --- Performance issues --- p.88Chapter 5.3.1 --- Complexity and strength --- p.89Chapter 5.3.2 --- An optimizing protocol --- p.90Chapter 5.4 --- Concluding remarks --- p.94Chapter 6 --- Conclusions --- p.9