3 Scopus citations

Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of software agents, there comes an increased need for agents to ensure that they do not provide data and/or services to unauthorized users. We first develop an abstract definition of what it means for an agent to preserve data/action security. Most often, this requires an agent to have knowledge that is impossible to acquire - hence, we then develop approximate security checks that take into account, the fact that an agent usually has incomplete/approximate beliefs about other agents. We develop two types of security checks - static ones that can be checked prior to deploying the agent, and dynamic ones that are executed at run time. We prove that a number of these problems are undecidable, but under certain conditions, they are decidable and (our definition of) security can be guaranteed. Finally, we propose a language within which the developer of an agent can specify her security needs, and present provably correct algorithms for static/dynamic security verification.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)169-235
Number of pages67
JournalAnnals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
Volume37
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2003

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Army Research Laboratory under Contract Number DAAL01-97-K0135, by the Army Research Office under Contract DAAD190010484, by DARPA/RL Contract Number F306029910552, by an NSF Young Investigator Award IRI-93-57756, and by NSF Grants IIS-9820657 and IIS-9907482.

Funding

This work was supported by the Army Research Laboratory under Contract Number DAAL01-97-K0135, by the Army Research Office under Contract DAAD190010484, by DARPA/RL Contract Number F306029910552, by an NSF Young Investigator Award IRI-93-57756, and by NSF Grants IIS-9820657 and IIS-9907482.

FundersFunder number
DARPA/RLF306029910552
National Science FoundationIRI-93-57756, IIS-9820657, IIS-9907482
Army Research OfficeDAAD190010484
Army Research LaboratoryDAAL01-97-K0135

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Secure agents'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this