Intercepting Password-Protected Email Attachments for Malware Scanning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Antivirus software struggles to determine the correct password for password-protected email attachments, especially when passwords are obscured by numbers, letters, images, or require human interpretation, leading to failed analysis and potential malicious attachment delivery.
Innovation Solution
A man-machine interactive approach that assists antivirus software in determining the correct password by intercepting email messages, modifying them to render attachments inaccessible, and allowing recipients to provide the password for analysis, enabling effective malware scanning before delivery.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If regular expression software is used to extract passwords from e-mail messages, then passwords in standard format can be extracted automatically, but passwords obscured by numbers, letters, images or requiring human interpretation cannot be correctly identified
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary human operator who acts as a mediator between the automated system and the obscured password. The system automatically identifies candidate password regions in email attachments, then pauses to allow human operators to interpret cryptic passwords hidden among numbers, letters, or images. This hybrid approach maintains automation for standard cases while leveraging human intelligence for complex cases that automated algorithms cannot resolve.
2Productivity
If antivirus software attempts to scan password-protected attachments without human assistance, then scanning can proceed automatically, but the software cannot open or analyze attachments with obscured or human-interpretable passwords
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary automated scanning of email attachments to identify those containing password-protected files. It extracts and analyzes the email body text to locate password information, preparing the groundwork for subsequent human interpretation. This preliminary action filters out easily scannable attachments while flagging only those requiring human assistance, maintaining overall productivity while ensuring reliable detection of protected malicious files.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback loop where human operators provide corrected password interpretations that are fed back into the system. When operators successfully extract passwords from obscured text, this information is used to improve future automated extraction accuracy. The feedback mechanism allows the system to learn from human expertise while maintaining automated processing for standard cases.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If the attachment is modified to render it inaccessible to the recipient, then the attachment can be protected from unauthorized access, but the recipient cannot open or see the attachment
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the attachment from the email message body and isolates it for separate analysis. The attachment is removed from its original context and placed in a quarantine area where it can be scanned independently. This extraction allows the system to analyze the attachment for malware without exposing it to the recipient, while still preserving the ability to deliver it safely if the scan is clean.
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary scanning process between the sender and recipient. The attachment passes through an automated antivirus scanning system that acts as a mediator, checking for malware before delivery. For password-protected attachments, a human operator serves as an additional intermediary to interpret the password and enable scanning, ensuring that no malicious content reaches the recipient while maintaining ease of access for legitimate files.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer analyzes a message attachment protected by a password. The message is intercepted from a sender before the message reaches the recipient. The computer cannot open, decrypt, unpack or decompress the attachment because the computer cannot parse the password. The message is modified to render the attachment unusable by the recipient and a URL is added. After the modified message is sent to the recipient, the computer receives the correct password from the recipient allowing the computer to open the attachment and perform anti-malware scanning. If malicious, the attachment is quarantined, deleted or blocked. If not malicious, the attachment (password-protected or not) is downloaded to the recipient, sent by e-mail or text message, or made available on a Web site. The recipient may be a mobile device or computer. Software may be part of an e-mail server, part of a mail transfer agent, or part of a separate computer.