On-Demand Booby Trap Injection in Live Processes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current cybersecurity measures, such as perimeter-based defenses and traditional honeypots, are inadequate in detecting and counteracting sophisticated cyber attacks, as they are often detectable by advanced adversaries and do not provide sufficient contextual information for defenders.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of application-level deceptions, or booby traps, which are injected into running legacy applications to provide active defense mechanisms that can be deployed on-demand without downtime or performance overhead, allowing for intelligent responses to attacks and gathering contextual information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional honeypots are deployed to detect attacks, then attack detection capability is improved, but they become detectable by advanced adversaries and provide limited contextual information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates application-level copies of legitimate software functions that mimic real application behavior. These booby traps are injected into running processes and present themselves as genuine application code to attackers, making them undetectable. The copied functions maintain the same interface and execution flow as the original application, fooling adversaries into believing they are interacting with real systems while actually triggering deception responses.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer between the attacker and the real application through injected booby trap code. This intermediary deception code intercepts attacker actions, provides fake responses, and prevents direct interaction with the legitimate application. The intermediary layer captures detailed contextual information about attacker behavior while maintaining the illusion of a real system, solving both detection and concealment requirements.
2Productivity
If application-level deceptions are injected into running processes, then deployment speed is improved, but system stability and security may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary validation and preparation before injecting booby trap code into running processes. The system pre-compiles deception code, validates injection targets, and prepares rollback mechanisms in advance. This preliminary action ensures that injections can be rapidly deployed without compromising system stability, as all necessary checks and preparations are completed before the actual injection occurs.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent dynamically changes execution parameters and memory states to control the behavior of injected booby trap code. By adjusting parameters such as code injection timing, memory allocation, and execution context, the system enables rapid deployment while maintaining stability. The parameter changes allow the deception code to operate within safe boundaries that preserve the integrity of the running application.
3Loss of information
If comprehensive monitoring is implemented to gather attack information, then contextual information availability is improved, but performance overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts monitoring and analysis functions from the main application execution path and places them within the injected booby trap code. This extraction allows comprehensive monitoring of attacker behavior to be performed independently without impacting the performance of legitimate application operations. The monitoring functions are isolated within the deception layer, capturing detailed contextual information while the main application continues to run efficiently.
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure provides for rapid deployments of application-level deceptions (i.e., booby traps) to implant cyber deceptions into running legacy applications both on production and decoy systems, with no downtime and minimal performance overhead compared with the original application. An application-level booby trap is a piece of code injected into an application, and which provides an active defense or deception in response to an attack. A booby trap does not influence program execution under normal operation, and preferably elicits a response that can be defined by a security analyst. In operation, a booby trap is compiled into a bitcode using a patch synthesis process, and it is then injected into a running application, where it is compiled further into machine code, and linked directly with the existing application constructs. The original function also is modified with a function trampoline, and subsequent calls to the original function are then directed to the new function. As easily as a deception (provided by the booby trap) can be deployed, it can be removed easily, thereby leaving no trace in the application.