Skip to main content
Log in

Secure Communication of Medical Information Using Mobile Agents

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recently several efficient schemes are proposed to provide security of e-medicine systems. Almost all of these schemes have tried to achieve the highest security level in transmission of patients’ medical information to medical institutions through a heterogeneous network like Internet. In this paper, we explain the insecurity of these schemes against “man-in-the-middle” attack. Furthermore, a dynamic mobile agent system based on hybrid cryptosystem is proposed that is both secure and also efficient in computation cost. Analyzing the security criteria confirms suitability of the proposed scheme for e-medicine systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Chen, T. L., Chung, Y. F., and Lin, F. Y. S., Deployment of secure mobile agents for medical information systems. J. Med. Syst., 2011. doi:10.1007/s10916-011-9716-z.

  2. Lange, D. B., and Oshima, M., Programming and deploying java mobile agents with aglets. Addison-Wesley Press, Massachusetts, USA, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Gian, P. P., Mobile agents: An introduction. Microprocess. Microsyst. 25:65–74, 2001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Biskup, J., Embley, D. W., and Lochner, J. H., Reducing inference control to access control for normalized database schemas. Inf. Process. Lett. 106:8–12, 2008.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Esparza, O., Muñoz, J. L., Soriano, M., and Forné, J., Secure brokerage mechanisms for mobile electronic commerce. Comput. Commun. 29:2308–2321, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Chung, Y. F., Chen, Y. T., Chen, T. L., and Chen, T. S., An agent-based English auction protocol using elliptic curve cryptosystem for mobile commerce. Expert Syst. Appl. 38(8):9900–9907, 2011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Nikooghadam, M., and Zakerolhosseini, A., An efficient blind signature scheme based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. ISecure: ISC Int’l J. Inf. Secur. 8(10):125–131, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Saxena, N., Tsudik, G., and Yi, J. H., Threshold cryptography in P2P and MANETs: The case of access control. Comput. Netw. 51:3632–3649, 2007.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Orgun, B., and Vu, J., HL7 ontology and mobile agents for interoperability in heterogeneous medical information systems. Comput. Biol. Med. 36:817–836, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Wu, S., and Chen K. An efficient key-management scheme for hierarchical access control in e-medicine system. J. Med. Syst., Springer, doi:10.1007/s10916-011-9700-7, 2011.

  11. Lin, I. C., Ou, H. H., and Hwang, M. S., Two secure transportation schemes for mobile agents. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 8:87–97, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Corradi, A., Montanari, R., and Stefanelli, C., Security issues in mobile agent technology, proceedings of the 7th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS ‘99). IEEE Computer Society Press, Cape Town, South Africa, pp. 3–8, 1999.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. Karnik, N. M., Tripathi, A. R. A security architecture for mobile agents in Ajanta, Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, 402–409, 2000.

  14. Volker, R., and Mehrdad, J. S., Access control and key management for mobile agents. Comput. Graph. 22:457–461, 1998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Chang, C. C., and Lin, I. C., A new solution for assigning cryptographic keys to control access in mobile agent environments. Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 6:137–146, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Huang, K. H., Chung, Y. F., Liu, C. H., Lai, F., and Chen, T. S., Efficient migration for mobile computing in distributed networks. Comput. Stand. Int. 31:40–47, 2009.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Vanstone, S. A., Elliptic curve cryptosystem-the answer to strong, fast public-key cryptography for securing constrained environments. Inf. Secur. Tech. Rep. 12:78–87, 1997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Stallings, W., Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice, 4th edition. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Liu, C. H., Chung, Y. F., Chen, Th, and De Wang, S., Mobile agent application and integration in electronic anamnesis system. J. Med. Syst., 2011. doi:10.1007/s10916-010-9563-3.

  20. Menezes, A. J., van Oorschot, P. C., and Vanstone, S. A., Handbook of Applied Cryptography. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 1997.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Nikooghadam, M., Zakerolhosseini, A., and Ebrahimi Moghadam, M., Efficient utilization of elliptic curve cryptosystem for hierarchical access control. J. Syst. Softw. 83:1917–1929, 2010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Nikooghadam, M, Safaei F., and Zakerolhosseini A. An efficient key management scheme for mobile agents in distributed networks, IEEE, 1st International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Grid Computing (PDGC - 2010), 2010.

  23. Knuth, D. E., The art of computer programming, vol.2: semi numerical algorithms, 3rd edition. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Nikooghadam, M., Bonyadi, M. R., Malekian, E., and Zakerolhosseini, A., A protocol for digital signature based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. J. Appl. Sci. 8(10):1919–1925, 2008.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Ben-Or, M., “Probabilistic Algorithms in Finite Fields”, 22nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 28–30 October 1981, pp. 394–398.

  26. Cohen, H., A course in computational algebraic number theory. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Lin, Y. L., and Hsu, C. L., Secure key management scheme for dynamic hierarchical access control based on ECC. J. Syst. Softw. 84:679–685, 2011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Koblitz, N., Menezes, A., and Vanstone, S. A., The state of elliptic curve cryptography. Des. Code Crypt. 19:173–193, 2000.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Chen, T. L., Chung, Y. F., and Lin, F. Y. S., A study on agent-based secure scheme for electronic medical record system. J. Med. Syst., 2010. doi:10.1007/s10916-010-9595-8.

  30. Liu, C.H., Chung, Y.F., Chiang, T.W., T.S., Chen, and Wang, S.D., A Mobile Agent Approach for Secure Integrated Medical Information Systems. J of Med Syst., 2011, doi:10.1007/s10916-011-9749-3.

Download references

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Morteza Nikooghadam.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nikooghadam, M., Zakerolhosseini, A. Secure Communication of Medical Information Using Mobile Agents. J Med Syst 36, 3839–3850 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-012-9857-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-012-9857-8

Keywords

Navigation