Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

Cyber-entities in the Bio-networking Architecture are autonomous mobile agents that construct network applications. The energy in the Bio-networking Architecture is a unit of exchange for service or use of resources and the behavior of a cyber-entity is influenced by its energy level. In this paper, we describe four types of attack on the energy level of a cyber-entity: malicious modification of the energy level by a cyber-entity itself, tampering the energy level of a migrating cyber-entity by a malicious node, malicious modification of the energy level by another cyber-entity, and malicious modification of the energy level by a platform. The energy level of a cyber-entity can be stored in itself, the platform in which the cyber-entity resides, or a centralized trusted node. The effective protection techniques depend on the location where the energy level is stored. We explore and discuss the security techniques and their limitations for three storage models: energy level in cyber-entity, energy level in trusted node, and energy level in platform.