API Hooking for Encrypted Traffic Inspection

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Existing network security systems struggle to inspect encrypted data for malicious content or compliance with security policies, as encryption protocols like SSL obscure the data, allowing potential security vulnerabilities and unauthorized data transmission.

Innovation Solution

Implementing an API hooking technique to intercept and access unencrypted data before encryption, allowing a data inspection facility to establish correspondence between unencrypted and encrypted data, enabling transparent inspection and policy enforcement without additional encryption or decryption.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If data is encrypted using SSL protocol to improve security and prevent undesirable interference, then data confidentiality is improved, but network security systems cannot properly analyze and interpret the transmitted data

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata confidentialityVSAvoiddata inspection capability

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by intercepting the encryption request and obtaining unencrypted data before the actual encryption process occurs. The inspection facility analyzes the unencrypted data at this early stage, establishing a correspondence with the encrypted data that will be generated. This allows security inspection to happen before the data becomes encrypted and unreadable.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces an intermediary component (inspection facility) that acts as a mediator between the encryption process and the security analysis. This intermediary receives both unencrypted data (from intercepted encryption requests) and encrypted data (from actual transmission), establishes correspondence between them, and performs inspection without disrupting the normal encryption and transmission flow.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If encryption is used to protect transmitted data from access by undesirable parties, then security against malicious parties is improved, but malicious content such as viruses and Trojans cannot be detected

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveprotection against malicious accessVSAvoidundetected malicious content

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs security inspection in advance by intercepting encryption requests and analyzing unencrypted data before it is encrypted and transmitted. This preliminary inspection allows detection of malicious content like viruses and Trojans in their readable form, before encryption obscures them during transmission.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

3Reliability

If data is encrypted before transmission to maintain confidentiality, then data privacy is improved, but encrypted sensitive data may be sent outside organization compromising data privacy control

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata privacyVSAvoiddata distribution control

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary inspection of unencrypted data by intercepting encryption requests before data leaves the organization. The inspection facility analyzes the content and can block encrypted data containing sensitive information from being transmitted, thus maintaining both privacy protection and control over data distribution.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

4Difficulty of detecting and measuring

If API hooking is used to intercept encryption requests for inspection, then data inspection capability is improved, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata inspection capabilityVSAvoidsystem architecture

Core Design Contradiction:

Difficulty of detecting and measuringVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces an intermediary inspection facility that manages the complexity of API hooking and correspondence tracking. This intermediary component handles the interception of encryption requests, maintains the mapping between unencrypted and encrypted data, and performs inspection, thereby isolating the complexity from the rest of the system and providing a clean interface for security analysis.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Data Source

PatentUS8578486B2Encrypted network traffic interception and inspection

Publication Date: 2013.11.05 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

A method of operating a computing device that allows inspecting data that the device attempts to transmit over a network in an encrypted form for presence of malware, viruses or confidential information. The method includes intercepting a request from an application to an encryption component of an operating system to encrypt the data and acquiring encrypted data generated by the encryption component in response to the request. SSL or TLS protocol may be used for encryption. The request may be intercepted using API hooking. The data in an unencrypted form and an identifier of the encrypted data may be provided to a data inspection facility for establishing a correspondence between the unencrypted and encrypted data, using the identifier. The data inspection facility performs inspection of the unencrypted data to determine whether to allow transmission of the encrypted data over the network.