A secure mobile agent protocol for vehicular communication systems

A Mobile agent (MA) is an intelligent software that performs tasks on behalf of its owner. MAs collect results migrating from one node to another. MAs have a small size and a low requirement of network bandwidth, they also reduce the load of the network making a Mobile Agent System (MAS) a preferred solution in distributed applications. Intelligent Vehicular Communication Systems are an excellent exemplary candidate for such applications. Although MAs flexibility is a great add on to application however, ensuring their security is considered a challenging task due to its network openness. In this paper, a novel Secure Mobile Agent Protocol (SMAP) dedicated for Vehicular Communication Systems is proposed. SMAP provides the essential security requirements e.g. mutual authentication, confidentiality, integrity, accountability, non repudiation and authorization. Using SMAP owner vehicles receive results as soon as they are requested and therefore, providing fast information retrieval process. Moreover, another important feature of SMAP is that unlike other protocols the loss of the MA does not necessary mean the loss of all the collected data. Furthermore, SMAP guarantees protection from many security attacks such as, Man In The Middle (MITM), replay, masquerade, modification and unauthorized access attacks. Verified using the well known formal verification tool Scyther, SMAP is proven to be a suitable protocol for securing vehicular communication links from malicious actions.