Research On Mobile Agent Data Security

Mobile agent is a developing information technology, which is characterized byits unique autonomy in decision-making and mobility during its life span. As analternative approach to traditional client/server network management(NM), themobile agent management paradigm promises flexibility, scalability and ease ofprogramming. Because of the specialities of mobile agent, for the area of mobileagents, security is a very important issue since neither the provider of an agentplatform nor an agent-based service, nor the owner of an agent wants to be harmedby any entity in the system. Especially, more and more researchers focus on how toprotect the agent from the malicious host attacks.To solve the tampering and monitoring attack in the mobile agent systemoperation, this thesis proposes a new concept and idea about the mobile agent datasecurity. Refer to the data hiding idea from dynamic graph in the softwarewatermarking field, we secretly storage the mobile agent data as dynamic graph afterthe reversible watermarking processing, which embeds the watermarking in theprocessed data sequence to authenticate the data integrity. This sheme is named asreversible watermark based on dynamic graph to protect the mobile agent datasecurity.The thesis first concludes the benchmark for designing the mobile agentsystems. Based on IBM aglets-2.0.2 and the benchmark, we construct practicalmobile agent system: the Airline Tickets Query System which is used to prove theeffectiveness of the protection scheme. The thesis introduces how to improve thePixel-difference-based reversible watermarking, and how to design and implementthe protection scheme in the Airline Tickets Query system. The contents of the thesisare as follows:(1) This thesis summarizes the mobile agent technology research field anddiscusses the security problems and the countermeasures about mobile agenttechnology. According to the mobile agent design knowledge, this thesis summarizesthe benchmarking survey of mobile agent systems, and analyzes the strategy toestablish the mobile agent systems.(2) Referring to the idea of dynamic graph watermark in the softwarewatermarking research field, the thesis design the dynamic link graph data security scheme to protect the agent from illegal tamper and malicious attack. This thesis alsoapplies attack of the Pixel-difference-based reversible watermark which is used inthe media watermarking fields for the application of mobile agent data protection,and thus we propose the integrated data protection scheme, including data storage,authentication, and retrieving of the original information.(3) According to the benchmark survey of the mobile agent systems, this paperdesigns a mobile agent-based system named Airline Tickets Query systems. With theapplication of the data storage security strategy, we tested the scheme's effectivenesswith the tamper and modification attacks. And we also analyzed the test results.The final results and effectiveness are basically consistent with the originalassumption and obtain a satisfactory achievement. It is a new concept to protectmobile agent data. Dynamic Graph with reversible watermarking algorithm has atheoretical and practical significance.