Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Specifying Security Requirements in Multi-agent Systems Using the Descartes-Agent Specification Language and AUML

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Information Technology for Management: Emerging Research and Applications (AITM 2018, ISM 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 346))

Abstract

Security has become an important concern with the development of large scale distributed and heterogeneous multi-agent systems (MAS). One of the main problems in addressing security during the development of MAS is that security is often an afterthought. The cost involved to patch existing systems against vulnerabilities and attacks after deployment is high. If developers and designers can spend some quality time investigating security aspects before beginning to code then this cost can be reduced significantly. Also, using formal methods to specify the complex behavior of large scale software systems has resulted in reliable software systems. This research effort was focused on using formal methods early in the development lifecycle to specify security requirements for MAS. New solutions are emerging to fix security related issues, but how much thought gets in during the early phases of development in terms of security needs to be answered. In this paper, analysis of security requirements for MAS, existing solutions to secure MAS, and the use of formal methods to specify security requirements has been studied. Descartes-Agent, a formal specification language for specifying agent systems has been taken into study to model the security requirements of MAS early on in the development process. Functional specifications of MAS are modelled along with the non-functional security requirements using the Descartes-Agent specification language. This paper also describes the extensions made to the Agent Unified Modeling Language (AUML) to represent the security requirements of MAS. The extensions proposed to AUML are in accordance with the extensions made to the Descartes-Agent specification language. A case study example is used to illustrate the specification of security requirements in MAS using the Descartes-Agent.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Borselius, N.: Mobile agent security. Electron. Commun. Eng. J. 14(5), 211–218 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1049/ecej:20020504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Borselius, N. Security in multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Security and Management (SAM’02), pp. 31–36 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Chong, S., et al.: Report on the NSF Workshop on Formal Methods for Security. arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.00678 (2016)

  4. Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N.R. (eds.) Intelligent agents: Theories, Architectures and Languages, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 890 (1995), ISBN 3-540-58855-8. https://doi.org/10.1007/bfb0013568

  5. Wing, J.M.: A symbiotic relationship between formal methods and security. In: Proceedings of Computer Security, Dependability and Assurance: From Needs to Solutions, pp. 26–38 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1109/csda.1998.798355

  6. Bauer, B., Müller, J.P., Odell, J.: Agent UML: a formalism for specifying multiagent software systems. Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 11(03), 207–230 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44564-1_6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. FIPA Agent UML Web Site. http://www.fipa.org/activities/modeling.html

  8. Huget, M.-P., Odell, J.: Representing agent interaction protocols with agent UML. In: Odell, J., Giorgini, P., Müller, Jörg P. (eds.) AOSE 2004. LNCS, vol. 3382, pp. 16–30. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30578-1_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Jung, Y., Kim, M., Masoumzadeh, A., Joshi, J.B.: A survey of security issue in multi-agent systems. Artif. Intell. Rev. 37(3), 239–260 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-011-9228-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Cavalcante, R.C., Bittencourt, I.I., da Silva, A.P., Silva, M., Costa, E., Santos, R.: A survey of security in multi-agent systems. Expert Syst. Appl. 39(5), 4835–4846 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.09.130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Hedin, Y., Moradian, E.: Security in multi-agent systems. Procedia Comput. Sci. 60, 1604–1612 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.08.270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Jürjens, J.: UMLsec: extending UML for secure systems development. In: Jézéquel, J.-M., Hussmann, H., Cook, S. (eds.) UML 2002. LNCS, vol. 2460, pp. 412–425. Springer, Heidelberg (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45800-X_32

    Chapter  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Mouratidis, H., Giorgini, P., Manson, G.: Modelling secure multiagent systems. In: Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 859–866 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1145/860710.860713

  14. Mouratidis, H., Giorgini, P.: Secure Tropos: a security-oriented extension of the tropos methodology. Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 17(02), 285–309 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1142/s0218194007003240

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Hussain, S., Dunne, P., Rasool, G.: Formal specification of security properties using Z notation. Res. J. Appl. Sci. Eng. Technol. 5(19), 4664–4670 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. von Oheimb, D., Mödersheim, S.: ASLan++—a formal security specification language for distributed systems. In: Aichernig, Bernhard K., de Boer, Frank S., Bonsangue, Marcello M. (eds.) FMCO 2010. LNCS, vol. 6957, pp. 1–22. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25271-6_1

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Hagalisletto, A.M., Haugsand, J.: A formal language for specifying security properties. In: Proceedings for the Workshop on Specification and Automated Processing of Security Requirements – SAPS 2004. Austrian Computer Society (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Urban, J.E.: A specification language and its processor. Ph.D. dissertation. Computer Science Department. University of Southwestern Louisiana (1977)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Subburaj, V.H., Urban, J.E.: A formal specification language for modeling agent systems. In: 2013 Second International Conference on Informatics and Applications (ICIA), pp. 300–305. IEEE (2013). https://doi.org/10.1109/icoia.2013.6650273

  20. Cernuzzi, L., Juan, T., Sterling, L., Zambonelli, F.: The Gaia methodology: basic concepts and extensions. Multiagent Syst. Artif. Soc. Simulated Organ. 11(2), 69–88 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8058-1_6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Żytniewski, M., Sołtysik, A., Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz, A., Kopka, B.: Modelling of software agents in knowledge-based organisations. Analysis of proposed research tools. In: Ziemba, E. (ed.) Information Technology for Management. LNBIP, vol. 243, pp. 91–108. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30528-8_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Etzioni, O., Weld, D.S.: Intelligent agents on the internet: fact, fiction, and forecast. IEEE Intell. Syst. 4, 44–49 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1109/64.403956

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Franklin, S., Graesser, A.: Is it an agent, or just a program?: A taxonomy for autonomous agents. In: Müller, J.P., Wooldridge, M.J., Jennings, N.R. (eds.) ATAL 1996. LNCS, vol. 1193, pp. 21–35. Springer, Heidelberg (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0013570

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Subburaj, V.H., Urban, J.: Intelligent agent software development using AUML and the Descartes specification language. In 2011 14th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing Workshops, pp. 297–305 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1109/isorcw.2011.43

  25. Kahloul, L., Barkaoui, K., Sahnoun, Z.: Using AUML to derive formal modeling agents interactions. In: The 3rd ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, p. 109. IEEE (2005). https://doi.org/10.1109/aiccsa.2005.1387098

  26. DiPippo, L.C., Fay-Wolfe, V., Nair, L., Hodys, E., Uvarov, O.: A real-time multi-agent system architecture for e-commerce applications. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium Autonomous Decentralized Systems, pp. 357–364. IEEE (2001). https://doi.org/10.21236/ada477877

  27. Subburaj, V.H., Urban, J.E.: Formal specification language and agent applications. In: Kołodziej, J., Correia, L., Molina, J.M. (eds.) Intelligent Agents in Data-intensive Computing. SBD, vol. 14, pp. 99–122. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23742-8_5

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, West Texas A&M University, WTAMU Box 60767, Canyon, TX, 79016, USA

    Vinitha Hannah Subburaj

  2. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    Joseph E. Urban

Authors
  1. Vinitha Hannah Subburaj
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Joseph E. Urban
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vinitha Hannah Subburaj .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Economics in Katowice, Katowice, Poland

    Ewa Ziemba

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Subburaj, V.H., Urban, J.E. (2019). Specifying Security Requirements in Multi-agent Systems Using the Descartes-Agent Specification Language and AUML. In: Ziemba, E. (eds) Information Technology for Management: Emerging Research and Applications. AITM ISM 2018 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 346. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15154-6_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15154-6_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15153-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15154-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation