Selective removal of protected content from web requests sent to an interactive website

• US 8,826,443 B1
• Filed: 02/27/2009
• Issued: 09/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Symantec Corporation (NortonLifeLock Inc.)
• Inventors: Wyatt, Timothy Micheal, Chen, Hai, Raman, Shree, Ferguson, John Gerald, Wootton, Bruce Christopher
• Primary Examiner(s): CHAO, MICHAEL W
• Application Number:
  US12/395,554
• Time in Patent Office: 2,013 Days
• Field of Search: 726/26
• US Class Current: 726/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/004 Error avoidance G06F11/07 and subgroups take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/552 involving long-term monitoring or reporting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/556 involving covert channels, i.e. data leakage between processes inhibiting the analysis of circuitry or operation with measures against power attack G06F21/755
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/60 Protecting data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6218 to a system of files or objects, e.g. local or distributed file system or database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6245 Protecting personal data, e.g. for financial or medical purposes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6254 by anonymising data, e.g. decorrelating personal data from the owner's identification
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227

Abstract

A method and apparatus for selectively removing a data element that triggers a policy violation from a web request to an interactive website. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method identifies a policy for protecting source data, having a plurality of data elements. The method further evaluates a web request sent to an interactive website as part of a web-based application, and determines that the web request includes at least one of the plurality of data elements triggering a violation of the policy. The method determines the data boundaries of the web request, and selectively removes data content within the data boundaries containing the at least one data element that triggered the violation to allow the web request to be processed by the interactive website as if it were the original web request containing the at least one data element.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

identifying a policy for protecting source data, having a plurality of data elements, using a data monitoring system (DMS) including a processor, the policy maintained by an organization to prevent loss of sensitive information;

evaluating, at the DMS, a web request sent to an interactive website as part of a web-based application, wherein the interactive website hosts the web-based application, wherein the web request is encapsulated according to a data structure specified by the interactive website;

determining by the DMS, that the web request includes at least one of the plurality of data elements triggering a violation of the policy;

determining data boundaries of the web request upon receiving the web request at the DMS, wherein determining the data boundaries of the web request comprises determining a rule used to capture the specified data structure of the web request sent to the interactive website, and wherein the specified data structure specifies the data boundaries of the web request;

selectively removing data content within the data boundaries containing the at least one data element that triggered the violation to allow the web request to be processed by the interactive website as if it were the original web request containing the at least one data element, wherein selectively removing the data content within the data boundaries comprises replacing the data content with replacement content based on a data type and length of the web request;

reevaluating, at the DMS, the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed to determine whether the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, wherein the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed comprises a header indicating that the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed is a resubmission for content validation;

upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, sending the web request to the interactive website, wherein the header is removed from the web request; and

upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have not been successfully removed from the web request, blocking the web request or allowing the web request to be sent to the interactive website unmodified.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the web request uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as an application-level protocol, and wherein the rule is a request grammar rule.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein selectively removing the data content within the data boundaries further comprises:

identifying the data boundaries of the web request containing the at least one data element that triggered the violation; and

redacting the identified data boundaries to selectively remove the at least one data element from the web request.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein selectively removing the data content within the data boundaries further comprises filling the identified data boundaries of the web request with the replacement content.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein redacting the identified data boundaries comprises replacing an attachment file including the at least one data element that triggered the violation with a marker file containing replacement content.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the rule comprises matching a request Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the web request to one of a plurality of URI patterns, each corresponding to a predefined request grammar rule, wherein the predefined request grammar rule that corresponds to the matched URI pattern is the rule used for the interactive website.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the predefined request grammar rule is determined by,

monitoring a plurality of web requests previously sent to the interactive website;

analyzing syntax of the plurality of web requests to define the predefined request grammar rule used for the interactive website; and

providing a URI pattern for the interactive website as one of the plurality of URI patterns to correspond to the predefined request grammar rule used for the interactive website.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed to the interactive website.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the rule comprises defining the rule using an expression language, wherein the rule comprises a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) pattern to match a URI request contained in the web request, and an action to be performed in response to detecting the violation in the web request.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the expression language is Backus-Naur Form (BNF) based expression language.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the rule further comprises an action message to be inserted into the web request for the at least one data element that triggered the violation, and a field type and description that is used to identify a field of the web request that is likely to contain the at least one data element.

12. The method of claim 1, comprising:

intercepting by a proxy the web request sent to the interactive website from a web browser;

sending the web request to the DMS from the proxy;

decomposing the web request at the DMS into a plurality of different components;

for each of the plurality of different components, determining by the DMS that data content of the particular component includes a data element that triggers a violation of the policy;

for each violation, selectively removing the data content within the particular component containing the data element that triggered the violation;

recomposing a modified web request using each of the plurality of different components without the selectively-removed data content to enable the interactive website to interpret the modified web request as if it were the original web request; and

sending the modified web request to the interactive website from the proxy.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the web request uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as an application-level protocol, and comprises a HTTP header and a HTTP body, and wherein selectively removing the data content comprises:

determining a request grammar rule using a request Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) present in the HTTP header;

determining whether the violation is present in the HTTP body;

if the violation is present in the HTTP body, determining which data boundaries need to be selectively removed using the request grammar rule; and

selectively removing the data boundaries that need to be selectively removed.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein selectively removing comprises:

removing the data element that triggered the violation; and

replacing the removed data element with a replacement message as defined in the request grammar rule.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

determining whether the violation is present in an attachment file that is part of the web request resulting from a file upload operation;

if the violation is present in the attachment file, identifying file start and end locations of the attachment file to determine data boundaries to be selectively removed using the request grammar rule; and

replacing the attachment file with a marker file within the data boundaries.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein recomposing the modified web request comprises setting a request length of the modified web request to match the request length of the original web request.

17. An apparatus comprising:

a network interface device to receive a web request sent to an interactive website as part of a web-based application, the web-based application being hosted from the interactive website, wherein the web request is encapsulated according to a data structure specified by the interactive website; and

a processing device coupled to the network interface device, the processing device to identify a policy for protecting source data having a plurality of data elements, the policy maintained by an organization to prevent loss of sensitive information, to evaluate the web request to determine that the web request includes at least one of the plurality of data elements triggering a violation of the policy, to determine data boundaries of the web request upon receiving the web request at the processing device, wherein to determine the data boundaries of the web request comprises determining a rule used to capture the specified data structure of the web request sent to the interactive website, wherein the specified data structure specifies the data boundaries of the web request, to selectively remove data content within the data boundaries containing the at least one data element that triggered the violation, to send a modified web request to a proxy without the selectively removed data content, wherein to selectively remove the data content within the data boundaries comprises replacing the data content with replacement content based on a data type and length of the web request, to reevaluate the web request without the selectively removed data content to determine whether the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, wherein the web request without the selectively removed data content comprises a header indicating that the web request with the selectively removed data content is a resubmission for content validation, to send the web request to the interactive website upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, wherein the header is removed from the web request, and to block the web request or allow the web request to be sent to the interactive website unmodified upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have not been successfully removed from the web request.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the processing device comprises:

a content matching engine to evaluate the web request to determine that the web request includes the at least one of the plurality of data elements triggering the violation of the policy; and

a rule enforcement engine coupled to the content matching engine, the rule enforcement engine to determine data boundaries of the original web request, to selectively remove the data elements triggering the plurality of violations within the determined data boundaries, and to generate the modified web request without the selectively removed data content.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform operations comprising:

identifying a policy for protecting source data, having a plurality of data elements, using a data monitoring system (DMS), the policy maintained by an organization to prevent loss of sensitive information;

evaluating, at the DMS, a web request sent to an interactive website as part of a web-based application, wherein the interactive website hosts the web-based application, wherein the web request is encapsulated according to a data structure specified by the interactive website;

determining by the DMS that the web request includes at least one of the plurality of data elements triggering a violation of the policy, wherein determining the data boundaries of the web request comprises determining a rule used to capture the specified data structure of the web request sent to the interactive website, and wherein the specified data structure specifies the data boundaries of the web request;

determining data boundaries of the web request upon receiving the web request at the DMS;

selectively removing data content within the data boundaries containing the at least one data element that triggered the violation to allow the web request to be processed by the interactive website as if it were the original web request containing the at least one data element, wherein selectively removing the data content within the data boundaries comprises replacing the data content with replacement content based on a data type and length of the web request;

reevaluating, at the DMS, the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed to determine whether the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, wherein the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed comprises a header indicating that the web request with the at least one data element selectively removed is a resubmission for content validation;

upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have been successfully removed from the web request, sending the web request to the interactive website, wherein the header is removed from the web request; and

upon determining that the data elements that triggered the violation have not been successfully removed from the web request, blocking the web request or allowing the web request to be sent to the interactive website unmodified.