Macro-level Attention to Mobile Agent Security: Introducing the Mobile Agent Secure Hub Infrastructure Concept

The autonomous capabilities of Internet mobile agents are one of their great attractions, yet leave them at the mercy of ill-intending agent platforms. We have devised an infrastructural strategy that allows mobile agent users to delegate responsibility to a trusted third party for the safe management of mobile agents they deploy onto the Internet. Our infrastructural approach is based on a Mobile Agent Secure Hub (MASH) which is capable of providing a large number of security services for agent users and their deployed Internet mobile agents. For instance, the MASH can gather statistics on the track record of agent platforms in providing safe and reliable execution of agents. These publishable statistics act as a deterrent against maliciously behaving agent platforms, as some agent users would be hesitant to send their agents to platforms with unsound track records.