Mobile agents and telcos' nightmares

The paper analyzes the current state-of-the-art of mobile agents technology wrt security, seen from the standpoint of a public network operator (PNO). It is argued that the current state-of-the-art does not offer sufficient security for large-scale, commercial applications of mobile agents technology within the PNO's networks. To support this premise, the most important security issues in this context are discussed, and a number of deficiencies are identified. Some of these deficiencies pose principal questions for future research that are not necessarily widely accepted within the agent community.