Mobile agents are processes which can autonomously migrate from host to host. The migration path followed by an agent can be abstracted for programming convenience into an itinerary. This is composed of tuples of the form (server name, method specification). A flexible structure of itinerary is specified in [24] using sequence, alternative an set entries. Despite its many practical benefits, mobile agent technology creates significant new security threats from malicious agents and hosts. In order to protect mobile agents, several itinerary protection protocols have been presented. However, they can only be applied to sequence entries. In this paper, we introduce a protocol for each kind of entry in order to protect general flexible itineraries established in free-roaming mobile agents. Our proposal uses ElGamal cryptosystem and a public-key infrastructure. Nevertheless, any public cryptosystem may be used.
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