This paper describes authentication mechanisms for mobile agents. In these mechanisms, the authentication of mobile agents is controlled by the mobile-agents platform using digital signature and a Public Key Infrastructure. Agents are authenticated via the authentication of their running platforms.

An important advantage of our technique is transparency of the mechanisms and the portability of non-secure applications onto a secure environment. The authentication mechanisms are integrated within the transportation layer of a mobile-agents system.

A minimal mobile agent system and the authentication mechanisms have been implemented. The implementation experiments have shown the feasibility and the advantage of these mechanisms.