Cloud File-Sharing Graphs for Malware Spread Simulation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Ransomware and other malware can propagate through cloud-based collaboration services, infecting users and encrypting their files, creating a significant risk of amplifying infections within organizations, with existing technologies lacking effective proactive detection and response mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
A system simulates and visualizes the spread of malware by constructing a directed graph from user-by-user and file-by-file data, calculating collaborative risk indexes, and using epidemiological models to predict and react to malware propagation, employing inline proxies and introspectors to monitor and analyze cloud-based service interactions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If cloud-based collaboration services enable file sharing and synchronization, then user productivity and collaboration efficiency are improved, but the risk of malware propagation and infection amplification increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by constructing a directed graph representing file sharing relationships and simulating malware spread pathways before actual infections occur. This proactive simulation enables organizations to identify vulnerable pathways and implement preventive measures while maintaining normal cloud collaboration operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary simulation and visualization system that acts as a mediator between cloud collaboration services and security monitoring. This intermediary layer analyzes file sharing patterns and malware propagation risks without interfering with normal collaboration operations, enabling risk assessment while preserving productivity.
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive monitoring of file sharing interactions is implemented, then malware propagation detection capability is improved, but system complexity and computational overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a simplified copy or model of the file sharing network as a directed graph, which mirrors the essential structure and relationships without replicating the full complexity of the actual system. This graph model enables efficient malware propagation simulation and analysis while avoiding the computational burden of monitoring every actual file interaction in real-time.
Data Source
AI summary
The technology disclosed relates to simulating spread of a malware in cloud applications. In particular, the technology disclosed relates to accessing sharing data for files shared between users via sync and share mechanisms of cloud applications, tracing connections between the users by traversing a directed graph constructed based on the sharing data, and simulating spread of a malware based on the traced connections to simulate user exposure to, infection by, and transmission of the malware. The connections are created as a result of syncing and sharing the files via the sync and share mechanisms. The malware is spread by syncing and sharing of infected ones of the files via the sync and share mechanisms.