In a distributed system, dynamically dividing execution between nodes is essential for service robustness. However, when all
of the nodes cannot be equally trusted, and when some users are more honest than others, controlling where code may be executed
and by whom resources may be consumed is a nontrivial problem. In this paper we describe a generic authorisation certificate
architecture that allows dynamic control of resource consumption and code execution in an untrusted distributed network. That
is, the architecture allows the users to specify which network nodes are trusted to execute code on their behalf and the servers
to verify the users’ authority to consume resources, while still allowing the execution to span dynamically from node to node,
creating delegations on the fly as needed. The architecture scales well, fully supports mobile code and execution migration,
and allows users to remain anonymous.
We are implementing a prototype of the architecture using SPKI certificates and ECDSA signatures in Java 1.2. In the prototype,
agents are represented as Java JAR packages.
This work was partially funded by the TeSSA research project at Helsinki University of Technology under a grant from TEKES.