Ph.D. / This thesis is a theoretical treatise on a proposed new computer security system, based on a biological immune system. Modem day network-centric computing is fast approaching the density and complexity of biological organisms, making biological and computer analogies relevant and meaningful. The success of biological immune systems in protecting life over countless millennia is well known. It is therefore postulated that a highly effective defensive mechanism can be developed, to transparently enforce an acceptable level of security in very extensive and complex computer networks and systems. It can be done by building very basic, but specialized autonomous software agents, functioning in a hierarchical system, that follow basic rules that can be deduced from biological immune systems. The computer security model proposed in this thesis does not require radical new technologies and it is extremely simple. The complexity however, lies in the effective implementation of the model. Three building blocks support the computer immune model: Biology, software agent technology and nanotechnology. The main features of the model are: • Firstly, it allows computer systems to automatically and transparently protect themselves, by using mobile autonomous intelligent software agents in an artificial immune system, based on biological immune systems. • Secondly, it allows computer systems to be pro-active in protecting themselves by being able to discern between which components are part of themselves (trusted system), and which components are foreign and may thus be harmful. Although part of the model relies on specialist human collaboration and international security standards, the main thrust is the heuristic ability of the proposed computer immune system. It allows systems to learn to recognize and cope with previously unknown cyber-antigens, automatically share the information amongst the participating computer systems, and thus 'inoculate' them to render them immune to similar attacks.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:2125 |
| Date | 05 March 2012 |
| Creators | Louwrens, Cecil Petrus |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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