A model-based aspect-oriented framework for building intrusion-aware software systems

  • Authors:

  • Zhi Jian Zhu;Mohammad Zulkernine

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computing, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont., Canada K7L 3N6;School of Computing, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont., Canada K7L 3N6

  • Venue:
  • Information and Software Technology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Security is a critical issue for software systems, especially for those systems which are connected to networks and the Internet, since most of them suffer from various malicious attacks. Intrusion detection is an approach to protect software against such attacks. However, security vulnerabilities that are exploited by intruders cut across multiple modules in software systems and are difficult to address and monitor. These kinds of concerns, called cross-cutting concerns, can be handled by aspect-oriented software development (AOSD) for better modularization. A number of works have utilized AOSD to address security issues of software systems, but none of them has employed AOSD for intrusion detection. In this paper, we propose a model-based aspect-oriented framework for building intrusion-aware software systems. We model attack scenarios and intrusion detection aspects using an aspect-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile. Based on the UML model, the intrusion detection aspects are implemented and woven into the target system. The resulting target system has the ability to detect the intrusions automatically. We present an experimental evaluation by applying this framework for some of the most common attacks included in the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) web security threat classification. The experimental results demonstrate that the framework is effective in specifying and implementing intrusion detection and can be applied for a wide range of attacks.