A Survey: Agent-based Software Technology Under the Eyes of Cyber Security, Security Controls, Attacks and Challenges

Abstract

Recently, agent-based software technology has received wide attention by the research community due to its valuable benefits, such as reducing the load on networks and providing an efficient solution for the transmission challenge problem. However, the major concern in building agent-based systems is related to the security of agents. In this paper, we explore the techniques used to build controls that guarantee both the protection of agents against malicious destination machines and the protection of destination machines against malicious agents. In addition, statistical-based analyses are employed to evaluate the level of maturity of the protection techniques to preserve the protection goals (the code and data, state, and itinerary of the agent), with and without the threat of attacks. Challenges regarding the security of agents are presented and highlighted by seven research questions related to satisfying cyber security requirements, protecting the visiting agent and the visited host machine from each other, providing robustness against advanced attacks that target protection goals, quantifying the security in agent-based systems, and providing features of self-protection and self-communication to the agent itself.