![ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010
Secure Architecture Evaluation for Agent Based
Web Service Discovery
V. Prasath1, R.Baskarane2 and P.Savaridassan3
1,2
Department of CSE, AssistantProfessor,1,2Christ College of Engineering and Technology,Puducherry,India.
2
Email: 1prasathvijayan@gmail.com, 2baskarannew@gmail.com
3
Department of IT, 3Dr.SJS Pauls College of Engineering and Technology,Puducherry,India.
Email: 3savari.pecit@gmail.com
Abstract—Web Services can be published, discovered and service provider and a service consumer. The WSDL
invoked over the web. Web Services can be implemented in document of a web service would include a security policy
any available technology but they are accessible through a description representing the types of security operations
standard protocol. With web services being accepted and that are required and supported by the Web-service for its
deployed in both research and industrial areas, the security
related issues become important. In this paper, architecture
SOAP message exchanges with consumers.
evaluated for web service on negotiating a mutually
acceptable security policy based on web service description II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
language to both consumer and provider [1]. It allows a
service consumer to discover and retrieve a service-provider’s A. Service Discovery
security policy for service requests and allows a service
Web service discovery can be performed based on a
consumer to send its own security policy for service responses
to the service provider. The service consumer combines its web service security policy using agents. It consists of a
own policy for service requests with that of the service service provider, a service consumer and a UDDI to
provider to obtain the applied security policy for requests, include a discovery agent and security agent and use an
which specifies the set of security operations that the augmented UDDI that contains security policy information
consumer must perform on the request. The combining takes to allow secure web service discovery (as shown in
place in such a way that the applied security policy is Figure1). The discovery agent acts as a broker between a
consistent with both the consumer’s and provider’s security service consumer, a UDDI registry and a security policy
policies. The service provider also combines its own policy for that helps to discover secure web services that satisfy the
responses with that of the consumer, to obtain the applied
consumer security requirements.
security policy for responses.
B. Security Agent
Index Terms—Web Service discovery, Security Service,
Security policy, Agent, ATAM, Web Services Security
The security agent describes the security requirement
that service provider needs to be registering their WSDL
I. INTRODUCTION into the registry. Web service security test case describe a
testing methodology for web service security and outline a
Web services are reusable Web components with their process that can be adopted to evaluate web service
programmatic interfaces described in WSDL.WSDL is a security requirements [8]. Test case can be classified
XML format standard for describing the interface of a web according to different categories of threat faced by web
service. The WSDL description gives information about services. Security policy can be represented in the UDDI
what exactly a web service does, how to invoke its registry which is typically used to specify the security
functions and where to find it. Universal Description, policy details of a web service.
Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) is a registry standard,
which allows organizations to publish and discover Web C. Discovery Agent
Services using standardised methods [4]. The UDDI is an A discovery agent receives service requests containing
industry initiative to provide a platform-independent specifications for functional and security requirements
framework for creating a UDDI Business Registry. There from the service consumer, finds the services that meet the
are currently several providers of UDDI registers called
UDDI Operators. The UDDI specification defines a set of
data structures and an Application Programming Interface
(API) for registering and finding businesses [5]. The UDDI
specification also allows organizations to create their own
UDDI registries in order to have more control for the
access and the updating of information, and the reliability
of the registry content. We concentrate here on one key
issue, providing security in Web services architecture. In
this paper, we evaluated a technique for deriving mutually
acceptable quality of protection for exchanges between a Figure 1. Web service discovery using agents
1
© 2010 ACEEE
DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/43-120919024233-phpapp02/85/Secure-Architecture-Evaluation-for-Agent-Based-Web-Service-Discovery-1-320.jpg)
![ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010
specified criteria, and then returns a list of services to the IV. EVALUATION OF PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
consumer in the order of priority. Discovery should be
The proposed architecture is evaluated by the Software
based on web service security polices for concerned
Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM).All the
request. The list of available services will be return to the
scenarios corresponding to each application of the secure
service consumer in order. This avoids the overhead of
web service discovery and retrieval are listed and
discovery mechanism to search secure web services over
evaluated.
UDDI registry for consumers needs.
A. ATAM: Secure Web Service Discovery
III. PROCESS MODEL We put ATAM to the test on our architecture and discuss
The model works with the exception that the containers the findings based on the outputs generated which include
hosting the consumer and provider classes emit a SOAP lists of risks, non-risks, sensitivities, and tradeoffs made.
message, which is intercepted by the security service. The The findings show that secure web service discovery and
consumer and provider classes could provide the <Security retrieval architecture can greatly benefit from using ATAM
Mechanisms> and <Security Services> elements to their by revealing its strengths and weaknesses before evolving
security services, in a WSS header, with the security the architecture further. It generates a number of outputs
service module identified as the target role. WSDL binding such as: a prioritised list of quality attributes, a list of
to support the publication of the security policy in the case architectural decisions made, a map linking architectural
that a provider offers a secured interface. Specifically, decisions to quality attributes, lists of risks and non-risks,
elements called <Security Mechanisms> and <Security and lists of sensitivities and tradeoffs.
Services> are associated with message definitions in the B. ATAM Process Phase 1
service’s WSDL instance. In addition, we specify a web
Step 1 - Presenting the ATAM Process
service security header for conveying the consumer’s
policy for service responses using the same element ATAM stands for Architecture Tradeoff Analysis
definitions. The <Security Mechanisms> element describes Method. It is a method that tells how well an architecture
a set of security mechanism, which may be applied to one satisfies particular goals by providing insight of how
or more nodes of the SOAP document [1]. quality goals interact and how they trade off.
Step 2 - Present Business Drivers
•Due to the increase of business-to-business
communication between different organizations over
internet resources, the current architecture will provide
secure service connection establishment between service
consumer and provider with added security policy.
•Suggest the service provider to accept the service
consumer requirements to add new security features to
perform secure tasks.
Architecture Drivers
The major quality attribute are as below
Prio- Quality Attribute Rationale
Figure 2. Model for web service security policy
rity Driver
Input: User request with specified security criteria
1 Security It is a major concern to this area of
Output: Secure match set of services from UDDI
the architecture because it should
u(h): Select all the services which matches the functionality
support authentication, encryption
requirements of user request that exists in UDDI.
and integrity over different
Let u(h)={ws1,ws2…..wsn}wss (h):
communication channel and
Choose the set of services which have been registered in UDDI with
platform model.
security specifications.
Let wss(h)={ws1(s), ws2(s), ….wsi(s)}
3 Availability The service should be in need to run
Step 1 : For each web services wsi in u(h)
at any time even system failure
//find the services that match the QOS requirements occurs over UDDI registry or service
Step 2: QoS based Selection=Qos_Match (u(h) , QWS Parameters);
provider.
Step 3 : If wss(h) requirements specified then
Step4 :{Secuirty_Search=Security_Match 4 Performance Continues user request will affect the
(QoS_Search,wss(h) specified); system response. we will establish
Step5 : If wss(h) ratings found then the user connection based on token
//find the services that matches security criteria request.
Step6 : return output of available services in wssi in u (h) according
to criteria rank}
Step7 :{Else return the output of available services wsi in u (h)}
Step 3 - Presenting architecture
Figure 3. Service discovery algorithm
2
© 2010 ACEEE
DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/43-120919024233-phpapp02/85/Secure-Architecture-Evaluation-for-Agent-Based-Web-Service-Discovery-2-320.jpg)
![ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010
V. CONCLUSIONS [3] Janette Hicks, Madhusudhan Govindaraju, Weiyi Meng,
“Enhancing Discovery of Web Services through Optimized
Universal Description Discovery and Integration has no Algorithms” IEEE International Conference on Granular
way to identify the secure web services when multiple Computing 2007 pp 685 - 698.
service providers are now providing similar functional [4] Colin Atkinson, Philipp Bostan, Oliver Hummel and Dietmar
Stoll, “A Practical Approach to Web Service Discovery and
services. An architecture evaluated called agent based web Retrieval”,IEEE International Conference on Web Services
service discovery to automate secure web service discovery (ICWS 2007).
for negotiating a mutually acceptable security policy based [5] Slim Trabelsi Jean-Christphe Pazzaglia Yves Roudier,
on web service description language for both consumer and “Secure Web Service discovery: overcoming challenges of
ubiquitous computing”, Proceedings of the European
provider in dynamic nature. Conference on Web Services (ECOWS'06).
[6] David Geer, “Taking Steps to Secure Web Services”,
REFERENCES Technology News October 2003.
[1] Zahid Ahmed, Martijn de Boer,, Monica Martin, Prateek [7] “Evaluating a software architecture and its process”, CS471b
Mishra, Dale Moberg, “Web-Services Security Quality of Software Design and Architecture,Group14NZB electronic
Protection”, Version 0.9 22 Nov 2002. banking system April 8, 2005.
[2] Kassem Saleh and Maryam Habil, “The Security [8] “A Web Services Security Testing Framework” Version:
Requirements Behavior Model for Trustworthy Software”, 1.00 SIFT Information security services,Nov 10, 2006.
International MCETECH Conference on e-Technologies
2008 pp 235 - 238.
4
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DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/43-120919024233-phpapp02/85/Secure-Architecture-Evaluation-for-Agent-Based-Web-Service-Discovery-4-320.jpg)
Secure Architecture Evaluation for Agent Based Web Service Discovery
- 1. ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010 Secure Architecture Evaluation for Agent Based Web Service Discovery V. Prasath1, R.Baskarane2 and P.Savaridassan3 1,2 Department of CSE, AssistantProfessor,1,2Christ College of Engineering and Technology,Puducherry,India. 2 Email: 1prasathvijayan@gmail.com, 2baskarannew@gmail.com 3 Department of IT, 3Dr.SJS Pauls College of Engineering and Technology,Puducherry,India. Email: 3savari.pecit@gmail.com Abstract—Web Services can be published, discovered and service provider and a service consumer. The WSDL invoked over the web. Web Services can be implemented in document of a web service would include a security policy any available technology but they are accessible through a description representing the types of security operations standard protocol. With web services being accepted and that are required and supported by the Web-service for its deployed in both research and industrial areas, the security related issues become important. In this paper, architecture SOAP message exchanges with consumers. evaluated for web service on negotiating a mutually acceptable security policy based on web service description II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW language to both consumer and provider [1]. It allows a service consumer to discover and retrieve a service-provider’s A. Service Discovery security policy for service requests and allows a service Web service discovery can be performed based on a consumer to send its own security policy for service responses to the service provider. The service consumer combines its web service security policy using agents. It consists of a own policy for service requests with that of the service service provider, a service consumer and a UDDI to provider to obtain the applied security policy for requests, include a discovery agent and security agent and use an which specifies the set of security operations that the augmented UDDI that contains security policy information consumer must perform on the request. The combining takes to allow secure web service discovery (as shown in place in such a way that the applied security policy is Figure1). The discovery agent acts as a broker between a consistent with both the consumer’s and provider’s security service consumer, a UDDI registry and a security policy policies. The service provider also combines its own policy for that helps to discover secure web services that satisfy the responses with that of the consumer, to obtain the applied consumer security requirements. security policy for responses. B. Security Agent Index Terms—Web Service discovery, Security Service, Security policy, Agent, ATAM, Web Services Security The security agent describes the security requirement that service provider needs to be registering their WSDL I. INTRODUCTION into the registry. Web service security test case describe a testing methodology for web service security and outline a Web services are reusable Web components with their process that can be adopted to evaluate web service programmatic interfaces described in WSDL.WSDL is a security requirements [8]. Test case can be classified XML format standard for describing the interface of a web according to different categories of threat faced by web service. The WSDL description gives information about services. Security policy can be represented in the UDDI what exactly a web service does, how to invoke its registry which is typically used to specify the security functions and where to find it. Universal Description, policy details of a web service. Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) is a registry standard, which allows organizations to publish and discover Web C. Discovery Agent Services using standardised methods [4]. The UDDI is an A discovery agent receives service requests containing industry initiative to provide a platform-independent specifications for functional and security requirements framework for creating a UDDI Business Registry. There from the service consumer, finds the services that meet the are currently several providers of UDDI registers called UDDI Operators. The UDDI specification defines a set of data structures and an Application Programming Interface (API) for registering and finding businesses [5]. The UDDI specification also allows organizations to create their own UDDI registries in order to have more control for the access and the updating of information, and the reliability of the registry content. We concentrate here on one key issue, providing security in Web services architecture. In this paper, we evaluated a technique for deriving mutually acceptable quality of protection for exchanges between a Figure 1. Web service discovery using agents 1 © 2010 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43
- 2. ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010 specified criteria, and then returns a list of services to the IV. EVALUATION OF PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE consumer in the order of priority. Discovery should be The proposed architecture is evaluated by the Software based on web service security polices for concerned Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM).All the request. The list of available services will be return to the scenarios corresponding to each application of the secure service consumer in order. This avoids the overhead of web service discovery and retrieval are listed and discovery mechanism to search secure web services over evaluated. UDDI registry for consumers needs. A. ATAM: Secure Web Service Discovery III. PROCESS MODEL We put ATAM to the test on our architecture and discuss The model works with the exception that the containers the findings based on the outputs generated which include hosting the consumer and provider classes emit a SOAP lists of risks, non-risks, sensitivities, and tradeoffs made. message, which is intercepted by the security service. The The findings show that secure web service discovery and consumer and provider classes could provide the <Security retrieval architecture can greatly benefit from using ATAM Mechanisms> and <Security Services> elements to their by revealing its strengths and weaknesses before evolving security services, in a WSS header, with the security the architecture further. It generates a number of outputs service module identified as the target role. WSDL binding such as: a prioritised list of quality attributes, a list of to support the publication of the security policy in the case architectural decisions made, a map linking architectural that a provider offers a secured interface. Specifically, decisions to quality attributes, lists of risks and non-risks, elements called <Security Mechanisms> and <Security and lists of sensitivities and tradeoffs. Services> are associated with message definitions in the B. ATAM Process Phase 1 service’s WSDL instance. In addition, we specify a web Step 1 - Presenting the ATAM Process service security header for conveying the consumer’s policy for service responses using the same element ATAM stands for Architecture Tradeoff Analysis definitions. The <Security Mechanisms> element describes Method. It is a method that tells how well an architecture a set of security mechanism, which may be applied to one satisfies particular goals by providing insight of how or more nodes of the SOAP document [1]. quality goals interact and how they trade off. Step 2 - Present Business Drivers •Due to the increase of business-to-business communication between different organizations over internet resources, the current architecture will provide secure service connection establishment between service consumer and provider with added security policy. •Suggest the service provider to accept the service consumer requirements to add new security features to perform secure tasks. Architecture Drivers The major quality attribute are as below Prio- Quality Attribute Rationale Figure 2. Model for web service security policy rity Driver Input: User request with specified security criteria 1 Security It is a major concern to this area of Output: Secure match set of services from UDDI the architecture because it should u(h): Select all the services which matches the functionality support authentication, encryption requirements of user request that exists in UDDI. and integrity over different Let u(h)={ws1,ws2…..wsn}wss (h): communication channel and Choose the set of services which have been registered in UDDI with platform model. security specifications. Let wss(h)={ws1(s), ws2(s), ….wsi(s)} 3 Availability The service should be in need to run Step 1 : For each web services wsi in u(h) at any time even system failure //find the services that match the QOS requirements occurs over UDDI registry or service Step 2: QoS based Selection=Qos_Match (u(h) , QWS Parameters); provider. Step 3 : If wss(h) requirements specified then Step4 :{Secuirty_Search=Security_Match 4 Performance Continues user request will affect the (QoS_Search,wss(h) specified); system response. we will establish Step5 : If wss(h) ratings found then the user connection based on token //find the services that matches security criteria request. Step6 : return output of available services in wssi in u (h) according to criteria rank} Step7 :{Else return the output of available services wsi in u (h)} Step 3 - Presenting architecture Figure 3. Service discovery algorithm 2 © 2010 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43
- 3. ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010 Scenario#: 2 Scenario: Authentication Attribute(s) Security Environment Normal operations Stimulus Service ticket has way to establish trust relationship with more than one security domain Response utility certificate are required to verify the user authorization Arch decision Reasoning Sensitivity Utility certificate Tradeoff More computation time and resource used, Performance, but not too much. Risk Provide certificate to user in more secret Non risk Not apply here. Step 4 - Identify Architecture Approaches Important Approaches of the Secure Web Service Discovery Scenario#: 3 Scenario: Confidentiality and Retrieval Attribute(s) Security Environment Normal operations Architectural Rationale Trade-offs Approach Stimulus Certificate authority has to provide security token to authenticate Layering It organizes the system in Security hierarchical structure that potentially Response Intermediary has no way to read the message while allows for easy system reduced risk establishing connection with service provider modification. Arch decision Reasoning Sensitivity The encryption algorithm. Step 5 - Quality Attribute Utility Tree Tradeoff More computation time and resource used. I=Importance, D=Difficulty to achieve, H, M, L = high, medium, Performance is the tradeoff with Security. low Risk Not apply to architecture, but the Encryption Quality Attribute Scenarios (I, D) algorithm itself, if it is not complex enough, could Attribute Refinement be hacked by brute force. Security Confidentiality Users' information (H,L) shall only be visible Non risk Not apply here. to users of the system and it is Scenario#: 4 Scenario: Non-reputation encrypted before Attribute(s) Security transmitting to the server. Environment Normal operations Integrity The system resists (H,M) Stimulus Utility has key certificate to form signed message unauthorized to verify the user intrusion and Response utility key certificate are required to verify the modification of data. user sign information Authentication This enables the user (H,M) Arch decision Reasoning to access the service Sensitivity Utility key certificate with required token Tradeoff Need signed key information for operation Non-reputation It verifies the signed (H,M) response information from Risk Provide certificate to user in more secret valid user Non risk Not apply here. Step 6 - Architecture elicitation and analysis Step 7 - Scenario Prioritization The following table prioritizes the Quality Scenarios for Scenario#:1 Scenario: Integrity the secure web service discovery and retrieval architecture. Attribute(s) Security The Scenario # refers to the scenario being referenced. Environment Normal operations Prio- Scenario Scenario Stimulus Prioritization Stimulus Unauthorized user without security token rity # Rationale cannot able to access the service available in 1 3,2 Transmission of the data It support user the registry (Security) over secure communication data from Response Identity Certificate are required to verify the unauthorized user authentication access Arch decision Reasoning 4 1,3,4 User information shall only This is to build Sensitivity Identity certificate (Security) be visible to administrative users confident users of the system and it is on using the Tradeoff Need resource to map data, Performance, but encrypted before system. not too much. transmission Risk Provide certificate to user in more secret Non risk Not apply here. 3 © 2010 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43
- 4. ACEEE Int. J. on Communication, Vol. 01, No. 03, Dec 2010 V. CONCLUSIONS [3] Janette Hicks, Madhusudhan Govindaraju, Weiyi Meng, “Enhancing Discovery of Web Services through Optimized Universal Description Discovery and Integration has no Algorithms” IEEE International Conference on Granular way to identify the secure web services when multiple Computing 2007 pp 685 - 698. service providers are now providing similar functional [4] Colin Atkinson, Philipp Bostan, Oliver Hummel and Dietmar Stoll, “A Practical Approach to Web Service Discovery and services. An architecture evaluated called agent based web Retrieval”,IEEE International Conference on Web Services service discovery to automate secure web service discovery (ICWS 2007). for negotiating a mutually acceptable security policy based [5] Slim Trabelsi Jean-Christphe Pazzaglia Yves Roudier, on web service description language for both consumer and “Secure Web Service discovery: overcoming challenges of ubiquitous computing”, Proceedings of the European provider in dynamic nature. Conference on Web Services (ECOWS'06). [6] David Geer, “Taking Steps to Secure Web Services”, REFERENCES Technology News October 2003. [1] Zahid Ahmed, Martijn de Boer,, Monica Martin, Prateek [7] “Evaluating a software architecture and its process”, CS471b Mishra, Dale Moberg, “Web-Services Security Quality of Software Design and Architecture,Group14NZB electronic Protection”, Version 0.9 22 Nov 2002. banking system April 8, 2005. [2] Kassem Saleh and Maryam Habil, “The Security [8] “A Web Services Security Testing Framework” Version: Requirements Behavior Model for Trustworthy Software”, 1.00 SIFT Information security services,Nov 10, 2006. International MCETECH Conference on e-Technologies 2008 pp 235 - 238. 4 © 2010 ACEEE DOI: 01.IJCOM.01.03.43