Design of the mobile agent anonymity framework in ubiquitous computing environments

In ubiquitous computing environments supporting mobile agents, agent anonymity is a critical issue in protecting the privacy of users. Agent anonymity means that no other entity can identify the identity of the agent performing an action. For agent anonymity, the information, that the user creates or contributes to, and the agent itself should not be revealed, which can be accomplished by hiding the identity of the agent working on behalf of the user. In this paper, an anonymity framework is described for mobile agent systems, providing agent anonymity facilities using agent identity encryption and access control facilities, based on partially blind signature. It is possible to service anonymous mobile agents in ubiquitous computing environments while reducing the abuse resulting from anonymity, by deploying the proposed agent anonymity framework.