Protecting mobile agents＇ data using trusted computing technology

Even with attractive computational advantages, mobile agent technology has not developed its full potential due to various security issues. This paper proposes a method called Private Key Consignment to solve the problem of how to protect the data carried by mobile agents. It exploits new functionalities and mechanism provided by the trusted computing technology, and adopts both public key and symmetric key cryptographic means for data and key protection. The most notable feature of this method is that it protects the private key of the agent by consigning it to a tamper proof hardware, thus, enabling convenient and secure use of the private key. It provides a new scheme of mobile agents＇ data protection.