On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, AARG! Anonymous wrote:
Ideally you'd like your agent to truly be autonomous, with its own data, its own code, all protected from the host and other agents. It could even carry a store of electronic cash which it could use to fund its activities on the host machine. It could remember its interactions on earlier machines in an uncorruptable way. And you'd like it to run efficiently, without the enormous overheads of the cryptographic techniques.
Yeah, it'd be ideal for the CIA and FBI and KGB and Mossad and MI5 and ... The perfect virus, unseen and untouchable.
Superficially such a capability seems impossible. Agents can't have that kind of autonomy. But trusted computing can change this. It can give agents good protection as they move through the net.
Imagine that host computers run a special program, an Agent Virtual Machine or AVM. This program runs the agents in their object language, and it respects each agent's code and data. It does not corrupt the agents, it does not manipulate or copy their memory without authorization from the agent itself. It allows the agents to act in the autonomous fashion we would desire.
who's "we"?
Without trusted computing, the problem of course is that there is no way to be sure that a potential host is running a legitimate version of the AVM. It could have a hacked AVM that would allow it to steal cash from the agents, change their memory, and worse.
Yeah, much worse - it might let the user know that somebody was watching them!
In this way, trusted computing can solve one of the biggest problems with effective use of mobile agents. Trusted computing finally allows mobile agent technology to work right.
I don't see the perfect virus as something desirable.
This is just one of what I expect to be thousands of applications which can take advantage of the trusted computing concept. Once you have a whole world of people trying to think creatively about how to use this technology, rather than just a handful, there will be an explosion of new applications which today we would never dream are possible.
Dude, you seem to be on some really nice drugs. Can you get me some? Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike