The firewall mobile customs agent: A distributed firewall architecture

The revolution of modern networking necessitates many new security methods to protect our communications from intruders. For example, users of the Internet employ encryption methods to protect their communications from spoofing or modification, and use tunneling techniques to hide their identities, while network system administrators protect their local networks by routers and firewalls to filter the communication passing through.; Using different types of security tools in network communication may result in some conflicts. For example, using an encryption method to protect the integrity and privacy of data may prevent a firewall from inspecting incoming or outgoing data from the local network. Combining these two methods will result in a strong security system that protects the local network and the privacy of the connection. However, it may compromise some security features, like the security of the encryption key from users other than the encryption channel participants.; In this dissertation, we are defining a new approach to combining these two techniques by handling a virtual private network through a firewall by a mobile agent; using an analogy to the real life example of a customs agent inspector. This agent will work at the end point of the connection for inspection as a delegate of the firewall and by its signature approve legitimate packets to pass the firewall without inspection.