Security Policy Deployment and Enforcement System for the Detection and Control of Polymorphic and Targeted Malware

• US 20130111547A1
• Filed: 10/26/2012
• Published: 05/02/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Carbon Black, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Confer Technologies, Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kraemer, Jeffrey Albin
• Granted Patent: US 9,223,978 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/552 involving long-term monitoring or reporting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/554 involving event detection and direct action
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/56 Computer malware detection or handling, e.g. anti-virus arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/566 Dynamic detection, i.e. detection performed at run-time, e.g. emulation, suspicious activities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/034 Test or assess a computer or a system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2101 Auditing as a secondary aspect
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1433 Vulnerability analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/1441 Countermeasures against malicious traffic countermeasures against attacks on cryptographic mechanisms H04L9/002
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227

Abstract

The present system and method pertain to the detection of malicious software and processes such as malware. A cloud security policy system receives hashes and behavioral information about applications and/or process executing on user devices. The cloud security policy system records this information and then evaluates the trustworthiness of the hashes based on the information received from the user devices to provide a security policy for the applications and/or processes. The security policy is sent from the cloud security policy system to user devices to be applied by the user devices.

Claims

1. A system for detecting malware, the system comprising:

user devices that monitor executing applications;

a security policy system that receives requests from the user devices for security policies associated with the applications and sends the security policies to the user devices from which the requests originated.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the requests from user devices are sent to the security policy system via the Internet using TCP (the Transmission Control Protocol).

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein the requests from user devices for security policies are sent to the security policy system at periodic intervals.

4. The system according to claim 2, wherein the requests from user devices for security policies are sent to the security policy system in response to messages received from the security policy system.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein hashes are associated with the applications and uniquely identify each application.

6. The system according to claim 5, wherein the hashes associated with the applications are created with SHA-256, MD5, or SHA-1 hashing functions.

7. The system according to claim 5, wherein the security policy system calculates a trust score for each hash after receiving requests from the user devices for security policies.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the trust scores are based on behavioral information received from the user devices.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein the behavioral information received from the user devices includes a number of companies reporting the hashes, a number of user devices reporting hashes, and ages of the hashes.

10. The system according to claim 9, wherein the trust scores are affected by an absence of expected behaviors.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein the security policy system calculates collective trust scores based on aggregated data from at least two different user devices.

12. The system according to claim 1, wherein the security policy system learns malware behaviors based on statistical variance between malware and trusted applications.

13. The system according to claim 1, wherein the security policy system calculates trust scores for the user devices based on the applications executing on the user devices.

14. A method for providing security policies, the method comprising:

receiving behavioral information about applications executing on user devices;

searching databases of known applications and utilizing crowdsourcing to identify the applications executing on the user devices;

determining trustworthiness for each of the identified applications based on the behavioral information received from each of the user devices; and

providing security policies for the applications to the user devices based on the determined trustworthiness.

15. A security policy system comprising:

a web services component of the security policy system that receives behavioral information about processes executing on user devices;

an analysis engine of the security policy system that determines trustworthiness for each of the processes based on the behavioral information received from each of the user devices; and

a policy engine of the security policy system that provides security policies for the processes to the user devices based on the determined trustworthiness.

16. A method for implementing security policies on user devices, the method comprising:

monitoring processes executing on user devices;

searching for security policies associated with the processes;

upon locating security policies, applying the security policies to the processes;

upon failing to locate security policies on the user devices, sending requests to a security policy system; and

upon receiving security policies from the security policy system, applying the security policies to the processes.

17. The method according to claim 16, further comprising:

upon failing to receive security policies from the security policy system, implementing default security policies for the processes.

18. A method for monitoring applications on user devices, the method comprising:

monitoring applications requesting to open files using system dynamic-link libraries;

searching for hashes corresponding to filenames of the files requested by the application in caches of the user devices;

upon locating hashes of the user devices, searching for security policies associated with the hashes; and

upon locating the security policies associated with the hashes, enforcing restrictions of the security policies.

19. A method for monitoring processes executing on user devices, the method comprising:

intercepting application program interface calls to monitor resource requests of executing processes;

maintaining a log of the resource requests in a database if the processes are being monitored;

applying security policies to the processes if the processes are controlled by security policies; and

sending the log of resource requests to a security policy system.

20. A distributed security system for monitoring processes executing on user devices, the system comprising:

an application program interface detour that intercepts application program interface calls and monitors resource requests of executing processes;

a reputation manager that applies security policies to the processes if the processes are controlled by the security policies;

a database of a user system that stores logs of resource requests if the processes are being monitored by the reputation manager; and

a reputation database of a security policy system that stores logs of resource requests from multiple user devices.

21. A method for identifying polymorphic malware on user devices, the method comprising:

monitoring behaviors of applications executing on user devices to determine fingerprints of the applications;

comparing the fingerprints of the applications to fingerprints of known malware;

determining if any fingerprints of the application are similar to fingerprints of known malware; and

applying security policies to the applications when the fingerprints of the application are similar to fingerprints of known malware.