Intelligent agent based artificial immune system for computer security—a review

摘要

Since its introduction in the 1990s the internet has proliferated in the life of human kind in many numbers of ways. The two by-products of the internet are intelligent agents and intrusions which are far away from each other in the intention of their creation while similar in their characteristics. With automated code roaming the network intruding the users on one side as worms, viruses, and Trojans and autonomous agents tending to help the users on the other side, the internet has given great research challenges to the computer scientists. The greatest challenge of the internet is intrusion, which has increased and never decreased. There are various security systems for the internet. As the Human Immune System protects human body from external attacks, these security systems tend to protect the internet from intruders. Thus the internet security systems are comparable with human immune systems in which autonomous cells move throughout the body to protect it while learning to tackle new threats and keeping them in their memory for the future. These properties are comparable with that of autonomous agents in the internet. Thus intelligent agent technology combined with ideas from human immune system is a great area of research which is still in its developing phase. In this paper, state of the art of security systems which use both these technologies of intelligent agents and artificial immune system i.e., Agent Based Artificial Immune System (ABAIS) for security are reviewed, paying special attention to features of human immune system used in the system, the role of the agents in the ABAIS and the security mechanisms provided against intrusions.