A free-roaming mobile agent security protocol based on anonymous onion routing and k anonymous hops backwards

Security and anonymity are vital for free-roaming mobile agent-based applications. Based on anonymous onion routing, this paper proposes a security protocol to defend truncation attacks for free-roaming mobile agent-based applications. This protocol uses "two hops forwards and k anonymous hops backwards" chain relation to implement the generally accepted mobile agent security properties. Security analysis proves that this protocol can defend known attacks, especially multiple colluded truncation attacks and provide privacy protection to previously visited servers. Performance evaluation shows this protocol requires limited communication overhead if right parameters are chosen.