S-MAS: An adaptive hierarchical distributed multi-agent architecture for blocking malicious SOAP messages within Web Services environments

► Security is a key factor in Web Service-based applications. Denial of service attack (DoS) is caused for the modifications in the XML of the SOAP messages. This paper presents a multiagent architecture to deal with DoS attacks in Web Service environments. The distributed approach provides self-adaption to the changes that occur in the patterns of attack. A prototype of the architecture was developed and the results obtained are presented in this study.