CROWD-SOURCE AS A BACKUP TO ASYNCHRONOUS IDENTIFICATION OF A TYPE OF FORM AND RELEVANT FIELDS IN A CREDENTIAL-SEEKING WEB PAGE

• US 20170091163A1
• Filed: 09/24/2015
• Published: 03/30/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: McAfee, LLC
• Original Assignee: McAfee, Inc. (McAfee, LLC)
• Inventors: Lakhia, Michael, Gagnon-Lamonde, Hubert, Lupien, Nicolas
• Granted Patent: US 10,482,167 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/226 Validation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/5682 Policies or rules for updating, deleting or replacing the stored data

Abstract

A technique allows a credential manager application on a client computer system to identify fields and forms on a web page. An analysis server may automatically crawl web pages and identify the fields and form, then push the information to the client computer system for use by the credential manager. If the credential manager discovers the information is not available, the credential manager may analyze the web form to discover the fields and form information, then provide the discovered information to the analysis server for providing to other client computers. The analysis server may use crowd-sourcing for asynchronous verification of field and form information discovered by the analysis server or provided by the client computer.

Claims

1. A machine readable medium, on which are stored instructions, comprising instructions that when executed cause a machine to:

receive a web page for a web site over a network by an analysis server;

discover field and form information for the web page;

validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service;

accept the field and form information as validated field and form information responsive to a positive result from the crowd-sourcing service;

receive a corrected field and form information from a human reviewer responsive to a negative result from the crowd-sourcing service; and

send the validated or corrected field and form information from the analysis server to a credential manager application.

2. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to instruct the credential manager application to invalidate some or all of a cache maintained by the credential manager application.

3. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to send the field and form information to a human arbiter responsive to a mixed result from the crowd-sourcing service.

4. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions to validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to:

generate a screenshot of the web page;

mark the fields on the screenshot; and

send the screenshot to the crowd-sourcing service for validation.

5. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions to validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to:

request at least three crowd-sources responses from the crowd-sourcing service; and

consider the at least three crowd-source responses as a voting result.

6. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to:

use computer vision to view a screenshot of the web page annotated corresponding to the field and form information; and

return a decision based on computer vision that indicates a confidence level that the field and form information is correct.

7. The machine readable medium of claim 6, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to:

pass the screenshot to a human reviewer responsive to the confidence level being lower than a predetermined threshold.

8. The machine readable medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions that when executed cause the machine to receive the web page comprise instructions that when executed cause the machine to:

employ a web crawler for examining web pages.

9. The machine readable medium of claim 8, wherein the web crawler is configured to crawl a predetermined set of popular web pages.

10. A computer system for determining web form information in a web page for a web site comprising:

one or more processors; and

a memory coupled to the one or more processors, on which are stored instructions, comprising instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more of the processors to;

receive a web page for a web site over a network by an analysis server;

discover field and form information for the web page;

validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service;

accept the field and form information as validated field and form information responsive to a positive result from the crowd-sourcing service;

receive a corrected field and form information from a human reviewer responsive to a negative result from the crowd-sourcing service; and

send the validated or corrected field and form information from the analysis server to a credential manager application.

11. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to instruct the credential manager application to invalidate some or all of a cache maintained by the credential manager application.

12. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to send the field and form information to a human arbiter responsive to a mixed result from the crowd-sourcing service.

13. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions to validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to:

generate a screenshot of the web page;

mark the fields on the screenshot; and

send the screenshot to the crowd-sourcing service for validation.

14. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions to validate the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to:

request at least three crowd-sources responses from the crowd-sourcing service; and

consider the at least three crowd-source responses as a voting result.

15. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to:

use computer vision to view a screenshot of the web page annotated corresponding to the field and form information; and

return a decision based on computer vision that indicates a confidence level that the field and form information is correct.

16. The computer system of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to:

pass the screenshot to a human reviewer responsive to the confidence level being lower than a predetermined threshold.

17. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to receive the web page comprise instructions that when executed cause at least some of the one or more processors to:

employ a web crawler for examining web pages.

18. The computer system of claim 17, wherein the web crawler is configured to crawl a predetermined set of popular web pages.

19. A method for determining web form information in a web page for a web site, comprising:

receiving a web page for a web site over a network by an analysis server;

discovering field and form information for the web page;

validating the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service;

accepting the field and form information as validated field and form information responsive to a positive result from the crowd-sourcing service;

receiving a corrected field and form information from a human reviewer responsive to a negative result from the crowd-sourcing service; and

sending the validated or corrected field and form information from the analysis server to a credential manager application.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising instructing the credential manager application to invalidate some or all of a cache maintained by the credential manager application.

21. The method of claim 19, further comprising sending the field and form information to a human arbiter responsive to a mixed result from the crowd-sourcing service.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein validating the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprises:

generating a screenshot of the web page;

marking the fields on the screenshot; and

sending the screenshot to the crowd-sourcing service for validation.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein validating the field and form information using a crowd-sourcing service comprises:

requesting at least three crowd-sources responses from the crowd-sourcing service; and

considering the at least three crowd-source responses as a voting result.

24. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

using computer vision to view a screenshot of the web page annotated corresponding to the field and form information; and

return a decision based on computer vision that indicates a confidence level that the field and form information is correct.

25. The method of claim 19, wherein receiving the web page comprise:

employing a web crawler for examining web pages.