Modeling the Artificial Immune System to the Human Immune System with the Use of Agents

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide a model and a work frame to approximate the artificial immune system to the human immune system with the use of agents to counter malicious software (malware). The artificial immune system components are commercial off-the-shelf products that are managed by the agent that coordinate and synchronize their activity. The behavior of the agent is a simulation of the B-cells in the Human Immune System in the encapsulation, analysis and digestion of the antigen. The proposed architecture can be implemented in almost certainty based on the use of the commercial off-the-shelf products (COTS). The agent can be constructed to perform the required functionality with the help of the sandbox tools that provide the encapsulation. Anomaly detectors provide the knowledge of any process' action that is considered abnormal, hence, a possible malware. The Antivirus applications provide the digestion of the antigen, where known malware is handled directly, while unknown malware is analyzed by signature extraction, then handled by the antivirus. Other components such as intrusion detection (ID) applications perform the defenses at the entrances to the system (communication channels) and the firewall applications provide the prevention of the spread of the antigen and quarantining it in the infected node. The implementation of the model will provide a parallel self-healing system against antigens along side the applications and hardware self-healing systems.