Digital content access control

• US 9,998,477 B2
• Filed: 03/31/2015
• Issued: 06/12/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Comcast Cable Communications LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Comcast Cable Communications LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Inventors: Kaiho, Nicholas
• Primary Examiner(s): SHOLEMAN, ABU S
• Application Number:
  US14/675,366
• Publication Number:
  US 20160294843A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,169 Days
• Field of Search: 726 30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9566 URL specific, e.g. using aliases, detecting broken or misspelled links
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• 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 2221/2137 Time limited access, e.g. to a computer or data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/108 when the policy decisions are valid for a limited amount of time
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/28 Timers or timing mechanisms used in protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/08 Access security

Abstract

Access to a linked resource may be protected using a time-based transformation of links to the resource. A linked resource may be transmitted to a browser in a markup language page. Information indicative of a time-based transformation of a link may be transmitted to the browser in the markup language page, or separately from the markup language page. The time-based transformation may be applied to the transmitted link. The transformed link may be requested, and compared to a version of the link that has been transformed, using the time-based transformation with respect to the time the request is received.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

transmitting a markup language page comprising a link that identifies a resource hosted by a server;

transmitting information usable to apply a time-based transformation of the link;

receiving a request to access the resource, wherein the request comprises a first transformed version of the link generated based on an application of the time-based transformation of the link;

generating a second transformed version of the link by applying the time-based transformation of the link based at least in part on a time that the request to access the resource was received; and

authorizing access to the resource based at least in part on determining that the first transformed version of the link matches the second transformed version of the link.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the information usable to apply the time-based transformation comprises instructions for transforming the link based at least on the link, a start time, and a time period.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving an additional request to access the resource, wherein the additional request comprises an additional link; and

rejecting the additional request based at least in part on determining that the additional link does not conform to a version of the link formed using the time-based transformation, wherein the time-based transformation is applied with respect to a time at which the additional request was received.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

processing the request to access the resource by at least, in response to the authorizing access to the resource, mapping the first transformed version of the link to a location of the resource.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising verifying that a user is authorized to access the resource, wherein the transmitting of the information usable to apply the time-based transformation is performed in response to verifying that a user is authorized to access the resource.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

forming the second transformed version of the link by at least applying the time-based transformation to the link based at least in part on time that has elapsed since an initial use of the first transformed version of the link to access the resource.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining to authorize access to the resource based at least in part on time that has elapsed since a start time being greater than a threshold amount of time.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the authorizing access to the resource is based at least in part on a time that has elapsed since transmitting the first link being less than a threshold amount of time.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the time-based transformation comprises a function accepting as input a number of time periods that have elapsed since a baseline time.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the resource corresponds to a portion of a multimedia file, the method further comprising:

setting a time period of the time-based transformation to be less than a first running length of a multimedia file and greater than a running length of a subset of the multimedia file.

11. A method comprising:

associating information usable by a client to apply a time-based transformation of a hyperlink with a link indicative of a resource accessible on a server;

receiving a request to access the resource, the request comprising a first transformed version of the link generated based on an application of the time-based transformation to the link; and

permitting access to the resource based at least in part on comparing the first transformed version of the link to a second transformed version of the link, wherein the second transformed version of the link is generated by at least applying the time-based transformation to the link based on a time that request to access the resource was received.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

receiving a second request to access a second resource, wherein the second resource comprises a link to the resource;

forming a version of the second resource comprising the first transformed version of the link; and

transmitting the second resource to a client.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

receiving an additional request to access the resource, the additional request comprising an additional link; and

rejecting the additional request based at least in part on determining that the additional link does not conform to a second transformed version of the link formed based at least in part on an amount of time that has elapsed since a baseline time.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

intercepting the request to access the resource; and

processing the request to access the resource by at least mapping the first transformed version of the link to a location of the resource, wherein the mapping comprises extracting a base link from the first transformed version of the link.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein permitting access to the resource based at least in part on comparing comprises determining that the first transformed version of the link matches the second transformed version of the link and transmitting the resource in response to the determining.

16. A method comprising:

receiving a link that is indicative of a resource hosted on a server;

receiving information usable to apply a time-based transformation of the link;

storing information indicative of a baseline time value associated with the time-based transformation of the link;

forming a transformed version of the link based at least in part on the information indicative of the time-based transformation and time that has elapsed between the baseline time and a time of forming the transformed version of the link; and

requesting the resource from the server by at least transmitting a request for the resource, the request comprising the transformed version of the link.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

receiving page markup data comprising the link and the information indicative of the time-based transformation.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the information usable to apply the time-based transformation comprises instructions for applying a time-dependent function to the link.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the receiving information indicative of the time-based transformation of the link is in response to transmitting credentials to the server.

20. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

transmitting a first request to receive a first subset of the resource, wherein the first request comprises the transformed version of the link; and

transmitting a second request to receive a second subset of the resource, the first and second subsets not wholly overlapping, the second request comprising an additional transformed version of the link based at least in part on the time-based transformation.