A Practical Demonstration of the Effect of Malicious Mobile Agents on CPU Load Balancing

Mobile agents are programs that can be moved, or can move themselves, from one host to another across a network. Hosts accept these programs without knowing in advance how they will behave. Whilst the majority of these agents should be bona fide it is possible that any mobile agent may be concealing some kind of malicious intent, perhaps to steal data or to break into the site. Research at the University of Reading is looking at ways to combat this potential future threat. The research has included the creation of a CPU load balancing demonstration system. The system demonstrates CPU load balancing using mobile agents and how this is affected by the introduction of malicious mobile agents. This paper describes how the CPU load balancing operates and shows how even very simple malicious agents can dramatically affect system performance.