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Abstract

Intrusion detection systems are quickly becoming a standard requirement in building a network security infrastructure. Although many established techniques and commercial products exist, their effectiveness leaves room for improvement. This thesis documents a design and prototype implementation of a modular, mobile agent-based intrusion detection framework, known as APHIDS. This framework provides a platform for performing distributed monitoring, search, and analysis tasks while realizing the benefits of the mobile agent model. Its modular design allows simple extension and adaptation to a large variety of scenarios. Several baseline performance measurements are accompanied by a theoretical framework to describe the performance implications of using mobile agents for intrusion detection-related tasks.