Protection%20of%20Agent%20Teamwork

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Protection of Agent Teamwork
By Jeremy Hall
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Agent Teamwork Overview

• Mobile agent framework
• AgentTeamwork2 is a mobile-agent based middleware
  system for coordinating distributed jobs in a
  computational community of computer owners.
• Java

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Protection Scenarios

• Memory Scans
• Memory dumps

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Project Goals

• Professor Fukuda
• Protect actual code per-method encryption
• Never allow entirety of program to be unencrypted
• Implement just-in-time decryption.
• Myself
• Agent teamwork is a big project.
• Impact the implementation of encrypted Java
  classes as little as possible.
• Impact users of encrypted Java classes as little
  as possible.

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Solution Overview

• Step 0 Compile normal Java class.
• Step 1 Create encrypted class by using a custom
  class loader.
• Step 2 Running the encrypted class.

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Step 1 Creation

• Start from compiled .class file
• Use Javassist1 library to manipulate Java
  bytecode.
• Generate a proxy of the original class
• Create a new class at run-time.
• Copy original class's inherited class,
  interfaces, fields, and constructors onto the new
  class.
• Create shell methods to replace original methods.
• Encrypt the real methods, and store inside of
  child proxies.
• Create and add a method at runtime to handle
  incoming method requests, decrypt the encrypted
  methods, and return value.

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Step 2 Method Execution

• Proxy's Method is called in Java code.

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Method Execution cont..

• Shell method is actually executed, and forwards
  parameters, parameter types, and method name to
  Invoke() method.

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Method Execution cont..

• Inside Invoke(), ClassServer is asked to return a
  Class based on the method name.

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Method Execution cont..

• An instance of the Class is created, and all
  class variables are copied from the current proxy
  object, and given to the newly created instance.

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Method Execution cont..

• Using reflection, the desired method is executed
  on the child proxy.

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Method Execution cont..

• Any return object is returned, and the class
  variables are now passed back from the child
  proxy to the original proxy.

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Method Execution cont..

• Return object is returned to the shell method
  which called invoke.

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Method Execution cont..

• Shell method returns the return object to the
  caller of the shell method.

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Limitations, and differences

• Creating new instance not so simple
• Class object
• ClassServer
• Key Distribution needed
• Functions may not be referenced in constructor
  (yet).
• Not threadsafe (yet).

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References

1. Javassist http//www.jboss.org/products/javassi
   st
2. Agent Teamwork - http//depts.washington.edu/dslab
   /AgentTeamwork/index.html