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Dynamic Agent-based Security Architecture for Mobile Computers
Roy Campbell and Tin Qian
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Digital Computer Laboratory
1304 W. Springfield
Urbana, IL 61801
{ roy, tinq}@cs.uiuc.edu
Abstract:
Technology advances in communication and transportation
and the recent wide deployment of Internet makes information exchange
much easier and faster than ever before.
The growing infrastructure permits mobile computer users access to
information anywhere and at any time.
However, mobile systems raise many challenges because of restricted size,
weight, energy and network connection media.
The challenge addressed in this paper is how to add security provisions
to mobile systems without sacrificing flexibility and performance.
For example, existing firewall-based enclave protection models
can not adequately meet the security
requirements of mobile computers while it is prohibitive for mobile computers
to run computation intensive security tasks given their physical
constraints.
Our paper addresses security issues in a mobile computing environment using
a mobile agent based security architecture. The architecture is based on
a suite of new technologies including mobile agents, active networking, interoperable
security policies and reflective structures. This new security architecture
is capable of supporting dynamic application specific security customization
and adaptation. In essence the idea is to embed security functions in
mobile agents to enable runtime composition of mobile security systems.
The implementation is based on OMG's CORBA distributed object orientation
technology and Java-based distributed programming environment.
Tin Qian
Mon Sep 29 12:58:42 CDT 1997