A novel approach for secure data transfer using mobile agents in distributed environment

Abstract

Mobile agent system provides a promising solution for applications in distributed systems where fault tolerance, performance and reliability are the key requirements. The degree of autonomy and intelligence possessed by a mobile agent helps to resolve a number of problems, especially related to network management and security. In most cases, the interoperability and adaptability of the mobile agent technology make it newlinepossible to supplement it with latest systems. Despite the advantages of autonomy and intelligence, mobile agents are prone to security threats and attacks.A number of security mechanisms are provided to ensure the security of data carried by the mobile agent. Chaos-based cryptography is one of the most secure cryptographic techniques. This technique has not already been experimented in the mobile agent environment. The Chebyshev polynomial based chaotic cryptography hybridized with ElGamal encryption newlineis experimented in the mobile agent environment. The hybridization is almost newlineakin to signcryption, a data security mechanism. The theoretical security newlineanalysis shows that the chaos-based cryptography is immune to most security newlineattacks. On analysis, in terms of execution time and throughput, it is found newlinethat the chaos-based cryptography is less performing compared to that of newlinehomomorphic and signcryption schemes. Chaos-based cryptography exhibits newlinea higher execution time compared to that of homomorphic and signcryption newlinetechniques. Also, chaos-based cryptography has a less throughput compared newlineto that of the homomorphic and signcryption schemes. However, chaos-based newlinecryptography is more secure because it is less possible to guess the key and newlinethe floating operations involved newline newline