S-MAS: An adaptive hierarchical distributed multi-agent architecture for blocking malicious SOAP messages within Web Services environments

During the last years the use of Web Service-based applications has notably increased. However, the security has not evolved proportionally, which makes these applications vulnerable and objective of attacks. One of the most common attacks requiring novel solutions is the denial of service attack (D...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Pinzón Trejos, Cristian, Bajo, Javier, De Paz, Juan, Corchado, Juan
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2018
Country:Panamá
Institution:Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá
Repository:Repositorio Institucional de documento digitales de acceso abierto de la UTP
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ridda2.utp.ac.pa:123456789/4779
Online Access:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417410012327
http://ridda2.utp.ac.pa/handle/123456789/4779
Access Level:Embargoed access
Keyword:Multi-agent system
Case-based reasoning
Web Services
XML message
Security problems
Description
Summary:During the last years the use of Web Service-based applications has notably increased. However, the security has not evolved proportionally, which makes these applications vulnerable and objective of attacks. One of the most common attacks requiring novel solutions is the denial of service attack (DoS), caused for the modifications introduced in the XML of the SOAP messages. The specifications of existing security standards do not focus on this type of attack. This article presents the S-MAS architecture as a novel adaptive approach for dealing with DoS attacks in Web Service environments, which represents an alternative to the existing centralized solutions. S-MAS proposes a distributed hierarchical multi-agent architecture that implements a classification mechanism in two phases. The main benefits of the approach are the distributed capabilities of the multi-agent systems and the self-adaption ability to the changes that occur in the patterns of attack. A prototype of the architecture was developed and the results obtained are presented in this study.