Abstract
Mobile agents are autonomous software entities that are able to migrate across different execution environments. The characteristics of mobile agents make them ideal for electronic commerce applications in open networks. Security is a fundamental precondition for the acceptance of mobile agent systems. In this paper, using discrete logarithm, an efficient key management proposal for mobile agent based on hierarchical structure is presented and its security is analyzed. It can achieve the property that related parameters do not have to update even if set secret keys are altered. So, the presented scheme may be more suitable for applications.