Authentication System for Online Examination Using Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code and Multi-agent System

Abstract

Agents are independent pieces of software capable of acting autonomously in response to input from their environment. A multi-agent system is a system composed of numerous agents. Besides, it can be used to solve problems which are difficult for an individual agent to solve. With the growth of Internet and distributed computing, more and more web applications employed agent based applications. Security is an important issue for the widespread development of application based on software agent. When users were simply accessing information on a network, simple passwords were usually sufficient to protect information. However, the increasingly distributed computing environment are often operated by multiple parties and password-cracking programs are available that can break typical passwords in a short period of time. Consequently, the need for stronger levels of authentication has become critical. This paper describes agents that used Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC) to authenticate valid user to ensure proper access and control of the web based online examination agent.