New efficient migration for mobile computing in distributed networks

Huang et al. [20] proposed a mobile agent framework for handling key management and access control problems between mobile agent and host based on elliptic curve cryptography. Huang et al. claimed that their proposed scheme can secure the accessing relationship between the mobile agent and the host. This paper, however, demonstrated a security leak inherent in Huang et al.'s scheme to show that the malicious node can overstep his authority to access unauthorized information. This violates the security requirement of the predetermined access control policies. Furthermore, we proposed a new secure, robust, and efficient hierarchical key management scheme to enhance the security of the key management and access control of the migration for mobile computing in distributed networks. Main contribution of the proposed scheme is described as follows. (i) It can provide better security assurance, while requiring smaller key-size and lower computational costs. (ii) It considers some practical issues about dynamic key management problems and provides simple and efficient solutions. (iii) It reduces key management costs since each visited node and confidential file maintains only one secret key. (iv) It can be implemented practically and simply, and achieve scalability.