When Ants Attack: Security Issues for Stigmergic Systems

Stigmergic systems solve global problems by using indirect communication mediated by an environment. Because they are localized and dynamic, stigmergic systems are self-organizing, robust and adaptive. These properties are useful for creating survivable systems, but stigmergic systems also raise new security concerns. Indirect communication makes systems more vulnerable in an open and hostile environment, and feedback mechanisms common to stigmergic algorithms can be exploited by attackers. In this paper we use AntNet, an adaptive routing algorithm inspired by biological ant foraging, to explore some of the security issues for stigmergic systems. We identify possible attacks and analyze their potency. We propose and evaluate mechanisms for defending against these attacks.