Uncertainty: An extra layer of security For Unauthorized traffic based Web Services

Distributed web services are under constant threat of being attacked from nodes, internal or external to the system. Internal attacks may result from hijacking of trusted web servers, resulting in loss/corruption of information, and Denial of Service (DoS) to clients. External attacks can occur from hijacking of trusted clients or malicious nodes leading to DoS to clients. The paper focuses on building an attack resistant framework for web services based on unauthorized traffic. Unauthorized traffic is a consequence of query driven session less HTTP-request/response message based web service applications, such as google.com. Dictionary.com etc. Unauthorized traffic based web service applications are supposed to have low response time. Unfortunately current mechanisms show lack of support for this traffic, since they add extra delay due to processing at intermediate nodes. The paper proposes a framework that optimizes the use of secure overlay services for unauthorized traffic. We add an extra layer of security around the web servers, which introduces uncertainty in the adversary’s actions and is achieved by introducing dummy servers to the existing system, which appear as real servers to the clients or adversaries. The dummy servers act as traps if an adversary attacks assuming them to be real servers. Secure strategies have been proposed to implement the dummy servers. These strategies reduce the risk of hijacking and DoS attacks, minimize the changes to external infrastructure, can be easily integrated with existing security systems, do not promote ISP collaboration, and helps in scaling the system.