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A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services

With the increased use of web technologies, microservices, and Application Programming Interface (API) for integration between systems, and with the development of containerization of services on operating system level as a method of isolating system execution and for easing the deployment and scali...

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Main Author: Khalil, Islam
Format: Thesis
Published: AUC Knowledge Fountain 2023
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access_status_str Open Access
author Khalil, Islam
author_browse Khalil, Islam
author_facet Khalil, Islam
author_sort Khalil, Islam
collection Thesis
description With the increased use of web technologies, microservices, and Application Programming Interface (API) for integration between systems, and with the development of containerization of services on operating system level as a method of isolating system execution and for easing the deployment and scaling of systems, there is a growing need as well as opportunities for providing platforms that improve the security of such services. In our work, we propose an architecture for a containerization platform that utilizes various concepts derived from the human immune system. The goal of the proposed containerization platform is to introduce the concept of slowing down or throttling suspected malicious digital pathogens (intrusions) to reduce their damage footprint while providing more opportunities for forensic inspection of suspected pathogens in addition to the ability to snapshot, rollback, and recover from possible damage. A similar technique is widely used in network-based intrusion detection. The proposed platform also leverages existing intrusion detection algorithms by integrating and orchestrating their cooperative operation for more effective intrusion detection. We show how this model reduces the damage footprint of intrusions and gives greater time window for forensic investigation. Moreover, during our experiments, we were surprised that our platform has uncovered previously unknown design flaws in our system being tested that resulted in internal DDoS-like attacks by submodules of the system itself rather than external intrusions. This was an interesting outcome that we reported to the software maker, and they were happy to learn about it.
format Thesis
id oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3264
institution American University in Cairo (Egypt)
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:35:54.296Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
publishDate 2023
publishDateRange 2023
publishDateSort 2023
publisher AUC Knowledge Fountain
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source_str AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
spelling oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3264 A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services Khalil, Islam With the increased use of web technologies, microservices, and Application Programming Interface (API) for integration between systems, and with the development of containerization of services on operating system level as a method of isolating system execution and for easing the deployment and scaling of systems, there is a growing need as well as opportunities for providing platforms that improve the security of such services. In our work, we propose an architecture for a containerization platform that utilizes various concepts derived from the human immune system. The goal of the proposed containerization platform is to introduce the concept of slowing down or throttling suspected malicious digital pathogens (intrusions) to reduce their damage footprint while providing more opportunities for forensic inspection of suspected pathogens in addition to the ability to snapshot, rollback, and recover from possible damage. A similar technique is widely used in network-based intrusion detection. The proposed platform also leverages existing intrusion detection algorithms by integrating and orchestrating their cooperative operation for more effective intrusion detection. We show how this model reduces the damage footprint of intrusions and gives greater time window for forensic investigation. Moreover, during our experiments, we were surprised that our platform has uncovered previously unknown design flaws in our system being tested that resulted in internal DDoS-like attacks by submodules of the system itself rather than external intrusions. This was an interesting outcome that we reported to the software maker, and they were happy to learn about it. 2023-06-06T07:00:00Z dissertation application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2222 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3264/viewcontent/ikhalil_PhD_Dissertation_Fount_Upload.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain web container api network security immunity os intrusion detection prevention Information Security OS and Networks Other Computer Sciences Systems Architecture
spellingShingle web container api network security immunity os intrusion detection prevention
Information Security
OS and Networks
Other Computer Sciences
Systems Architecture
Khalil, Islam
A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title_full A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title_fullStr A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title_full_unstemmed A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title_short A Multimodal Immune System Inspired Defense Architecture for Detecting and Deterring Digital Pathogens in Container Hosted Web Services
title_sort multimodal immune system inspired defense architecture for detecting and deterring digital pathogens in container hosted web services
topic web container api network security immunity os intrusion detection prevention
Information Security
OS and Networks
Other Computer Sciences
Systems Architecture
url https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2222
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3264/viewcontent/ikhalil_PhD_Dissertation_Fount_Upload.pdf
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AT khalilislam multimodalimmunesysteminspireddefensearchitecturefordetectinganddeterringdigitalpathogensincontainerhostedwebservices