SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ENFORCING POLICIES TO BLOCK SEARCH ENGINE QUERIES FOR WEB-BASED PROXY SITES

• US 20100205215A1
• Filed: 02/11/2009
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/11/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sophos Limited (Sophos Group Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sophos Limited (Sophos Group Ltd.)
• Inventors: Cook, Robert W., Ianchici, Alexander
• Application Number:
  US12/369,060
• Publication Number:
  US 20100205215A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/781
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9566 URL specific, e.g. using aliases, detecting broken or misspelled links
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/51 at application loading time, e.g. accepting, rejecting, starting or inhibiting executable software based on integrity or source reliability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0227 Filtering policies mail message filtering H04L51/212

Abstract

In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for systems and methods that enforce policies with respect to proxy communications.

Claims

1. A computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computers, performs the steps of:

intercepting a universal resource locator (URL) request from a client computing facility;

interpreting terms in the URL to identify that the URL was produced by a search engine in response to a search; and

interpreting the terms in the URL to identify that the search was directed towards locating a blocked category of website.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising:

blocking the website.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising:

allowing connection to the website.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising:

sending an alert and allowing connection to the website.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising:

performing a content analysis on a website associated with the URL to confirm that it is of the blocked type of website.

6. The computer program product of claim 5, further comprising blocking the website.

7. The computer program product of claim 5, further comprising allowing connection to the website.

8. The computer program product of claim 5, further comprising sending an alert and allowing connection to the website.

9. A computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computers, performs the steps of:

intercepting a universal resource locator (URL) request from a client computing facility;

interpreting characters in the URL to identify that the URL was produced by a search engine in response to a search; and

interpreting the characters in the URL to identify that the search was directed towards locating a blocked category of website.

10. A computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computers, blocks proxy website interactions by performing the steps of:

intercepting a universal resource locator (URL) request from a client computing facility;

analyzing the characters that comprise the URL; and

in response to a finding that the URL was produced by a search engine software program and directed to a search request for a proxy site, blocking access to search results based on the URL.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL involves detecting keywords in the URL and comparing the keywords to a database of suspicious keywords to find a match.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL involves detecting strings of characters that match a string of characters typical of a search engine.

13. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL involves detecting strings of characters that match a string of characters typical of a proxy website identification search.

14. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL involves detecting regular expressions that match a regular expression typical of a search engine.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the regular expression involves prefix matching.

16. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the regular expression involves suffix matching.

17. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the regular expression involves wildcard matching.

18. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the regular expression involves substitution matching.

19. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL is performed on the client computing facility.

20. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the step of analyzing the characters that comprise the URL is performed on a network resource associated with the client computing facility.