Efficient Date-constraint Access Control and Key Management Scheme for Mobile Agents

Yu-Fang Chung, Ming-Hsien Kao, Tzer-Long Chen, Tzer-Shyong Chen
unpublished
A mobile agent has become a competent software nowadays because of its significant abilities. It can roam freely in different Internet environments, adapt itself to various types of online servers totally associated to the characteristics of said server, and detect its environment and automatic adaptation to the environment while executing the assigned tasks by users. Due to these competencies, mobile agents have been widely used in Internet business, wireless communications, information
more » ... y technologies and so forth. In 1983, Akl and Taylor suggested the concept of super-key to resolve the key management issues. It's the kind of thing where a mobile agent faces. Thus in 1998, Volker and Mehrdad proposed a tree-based mobile agent model to deal with the access control problem. The proposed scheme is based upon Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem (ECC), which enhances the operational ability of a mobile agent because of shorter key length and higher efficiency on encryption and decryption processes. For a mobile agent, a said user will be forced to log out of the system due to error or change in the user's rights or after a period of time. As is the case, the system must keep modifying the original access rights of the key so as to prevent a user from continuing to use his old key. However, this action could cause unnecessary error and risks, in addition to the large amount of computations that the system needs to perform. Hence, this paper proposes a Date-constraint key management scheme, where a date is attached to a key, so as to give its validity period of the key. Thus, key management can be more efficient.
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