An Enhanced Authentication System for the JADE-S Platform

Multi-agent systems require a set of security mechanism threats such as confidentiality, privacy, authentication, data integrity, access control. Authentication is the process of deducing which user has made a specific request in a multi-agent system. The goal of authentication is to allow legitimate system entities to process while denying illegitimate ones. The JADE-S platform requires that users must be authenticated, providing a username and password, in order to be able to perform actions on the platform. In this paper an enhanced user authentication system for the JADE-S platform, requiring user fingerprint in addition to the standard items, is outlined. Due to their uniqueness and immutability, fingerprints can be successfully used in personal authentication systems. JADE-S authentication system has been modified integrating the proposed approach. The first security access level verifies username and password supplied by the user. The second security access level, requires user fingerprint and compares it with the related item stored in a fingerprints database. A public/private key pair is used to sign each database fingerprint, so the system is able to check against the authenticity of the signed fingerprint before matching.