On agent-based software engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Mobile Search for a Black Hole in an Anonymous Ring
DISC '01 Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Distributed Computing
Sense of direction in distributed computing
Theoretical Computer Science - Special issue: Distributed computing
A Framework to Protect Mobile Agents by Using Reference States
ICDCS '00 Proceedings of the The 20th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems ( ICDCS 2000)
Research note: Security issues related to mobile code and agent-based systems
Computer Communications
IEEE Communications Magazine
Complexity of Searching for a Black Hole
Fundamenta Informaticae
Distributed chasing of network intruders
Theoretical Computer Science
Locating and Repairing Faults in a Network with Mobile Agents
SIROCCO '08 Proceedings of the 15th international colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Synchronization Helps Robots to Detect Black Holes in Directed Graphs
OPODIS '09 Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Quiescence of self-stabilizing gossiping among mobile agents in graphs
Theoretical Computer Science
SIROCCO'07 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Structural information and communication complexity
Fault-tolerant simulation of message-passing algorithms by mobile agents
SIROCCO'07 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Structural information and communication complexity
On the self-stabilization of mobile robots in graphs
OPODIS'07 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Principles of distributed systems
Searching for black-hole faults in a network using multiple agents
OPODIS'06 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Black hole search in asynchronous rings using tokens
CIAC'06 Proceedings of the 6th Italian conference on Algorithms and Complexity
Searching for a black hole in tree networks
OPODIS'04 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Finding short right-hand-on-the-wall walks in graphs
SIROCCO'05 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Hardness and approximation results for black hole search in arbitrary graphs
SIROCCO'05 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Approximation bounds for black hole search problems
OPODIS'05 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Black hole search in directed graphs
SIROCCO'09 Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Periodic data retrieval problem in rings containing a malicious host
SIROCCO'10 Proceedings of the 17th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Complexity of Searching for a Black Hole
Fundamenta Informaticae
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Protecting agents from host attacks is a pressing security concern in networked environments supporting mobile agents. In this paper, we consider a black hole: a highly harmful host that disposes of visiting agents upon their arrival, leaving no observable trace of such a destruction. The task to identify the location of the harmful host is clearly dangerous for the searching agents. We study under what conditions and at what cost a team of autonomous asynchronous mobile agents can successfully accomplish this task; we are concerned with solutions that are generic (i.e., topology-independent). We study the size of the optimal solution (i.e., the minimum number of agents needed to locate the black hole), and the cost of the minimal solution (i.e., the number of moves performed by the agents executing a size-optimal solution protocol). We establish tight bounds on size and cost depending on the a priori knowledge the agents have about the network, and on the consistency of the local labellings. In particular, we prove that: with topological ignorance Δ + 1 agents are needed and suffice, and the cost is Θ(n2), where Δ is the maximal degree of a node and n is the number of the nodes in the network; with topological ignorance but in presence of sense of direction only two agents suffice and the cost is Θ(n2); and with complete topological knowledge only two agents suffice and the cost is Θ(n log n). All the upper-bound proofs are constructive.