A Proposal of Replica Management Based on MIC Method Suitable for Mobile Computation Environments

We propose a fault-tolerant mechanism based on message integrity code (MIC) method for mobile agent authentication under non-secured network environment. We introduce one or more secured nodes (OASIS NODE) and a mobile agent (FT_Agent) having a replica management mechanism. We assume that the candidate agents for authentication are safely stored in an OASIS NODE and a shared secret key is safely distributed to user terminals from the OASIS NODE at the beginning. When the replica agents on user terminals need their authentication, they calculate MIC by using the shared secret key and move themselves having the MIC to the OASIS NODE, which verifies the MIC. The FT_Agents which are also verified by an OASIS NODE are distributed to the each agent and dynamically manage active replicas and passive replicas. By introducing the MIC method and the replica management mechanism, a secured fault-tolerant system suitable for mobile agents under non-secured network environment can be constructed.