Access Control For Mobile Agents

1
Access Control For Mobile Agents

• Sudipta Rakshit
• University of Central Florida, Spring 2002

2
Concepts

• Mobile Agent (MA) - Autonomous, executable
  program that can migrate on its own.
• Access Control - Authentication of a request to
  use a resource and Authorization of the request

3
How it works

• The mobile agent visits one or several machines
  and either performs some task by itself or asks
  some resident program to perform the task for it
  (MA).

4
Problems

• Malicious hosts and/or code - the host may
  change certain critical portion of the code
  and/or vice versa

5
Travel Agent Example
Airline 2
Airline 1
MA(3)
MA(4)
MA(2)
Travel Agent
Customer
Request(1)
Result(5)
6
Objective

• Objective -
• 1.To design and implement an access control
  policy for the simple 2-3 servers system above.
• 2. To provide an access control framework for
  a more distributed system

7
References

• Authentication in Distributed Systems Theory
  and Practice, B. Lampson, M. Abadi, M. Burrows,
  and E. Wobber. ACM Trans. Computer Systems 10, 4
  (Nov. 1992), pp265-310.
• http//delivery.acm.org/10.1145/140000/138874/p26
  5-lampson.pdf?key1138874key21669592101collpor
  taldlACMCFID1545331CFTOKEN87451905
• Authentication for Mobile Agents, Shimshon
  Berkovits, Joshua D. Guttman, and Vipin Swarup.
  LNCS 1419, pp 114-136
• http//link.springer.de/link/service/series/
  0558/papers/1419/14190114.pdf
• Linda in Context, Nicholas Carriero and David
  Gelernter. Communications of the ACM April 1989,
  Volume 32 Issue 4, pp 444-458
• http//portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id63337coll
  portaldlACMCFID1506807CFTOKEN43124044
• Making Tuple Spaces Safe for Heterogeneous
  Distributed Systems, N. H. Minsky, Y. M. Minsky
  and V. Ungureanu, ACM SAC 2000 Special Track on
  Coordination Models, Languages and Applications,
  Como, Italy, 19-21 April, 2000, pp. 218-226.
• http//delivery.acm.org/10.1145/340000/335748/p2
  18-minsky.pdf?key1335748key25819592101collpor
  taldlACMCFID1545331CFTOKEN87451905

8
Pointers to References

• 1. "Authentication for Mobile Agents" by Shimshon
  Berkovits, Joshua Guttman and Vipin Swarum
• LNCS vol 1419 pp 114-136
• http//link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/p
  apers/1419/14190114.pdf
•  
• 2. "Making Tuple Spaces Safe for Heterogeneous
  Distributed Systems"
• Naftaly Minsky, Yaron Minsky and Victoria
  Ungureanu
• http//delivery.acm.org/10.1145/340000/335748/p218
  -minsky.pdf?key1335748key25819592101collporta
  ldlACMCFID1545331CFTOKEN87451905 
•  
• 3."Linda in Context" by Nicholas Carriero and
  David Gelernter....I am not providing the pointer
  to this paper as this one basically deals with
  how Linda works.
•  
• 4. "Authentication in Distributed Systems"
  Lampson, Abdi, Burrows and Wobber.
• http//delivery.acm.org/10.1145/140000/138874/p265
  -lampson.pdf?key1138874key21669592101collport
  aldlACMCFID1545331CFTOKEN87451905