Protecting Applications Against Malice Using Adaptive Middleware

Citation: Richard E. Schantz, Franklin Webber, Partha Pal, Joseph Loyall, Douglas C. Schmidt; WCC security - submittted to Enrico Nardelli, to appear May 2003.

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Abstract A distributed application can be given increased resistance to certain types of malicious behavior, even when the environment in which it is operating contains untrustworthy elements. Recent trends in protecting applications use operating systems as only the first layer of security, anticipating that this layer may be breached. Another layer is added to react to and repair the damage done by intruders that succeed in breaching the first layer. A promising approach to designing the second layer of protection uses adaptive middleware to enable agile behavior and to coordinate protective responses across the distributed system, even in resource-depleted environments. This new approach to protection complements more traditional approaches { in which only one layer of security is used } by hardening critical components at multiple system levels. When integrated selectively, this multi-level approach makes it harder for intruders to corrupt or disable distributed systems and applications. This paper presents three contributions to the study of protecting distributed applications against malicious behavior. First, we describe the key ideas and technologies behind the emerging multi-level approach to protecting distributed applications. Second, we explain how these ideas relate to security engineering in general. Finally, we report recent results in evaluating a collection of technologies that implement this approach. These results reinforce the premise that an adaptive middleware approach to increasing survival time and enabling applications to operate through attacks is feasible, though much additional research remains to be done.