Network Appliance Executable Wrapping for Zero-Day Threat Isolation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional signature-based security solutions are ineffective against Zero-day and Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) attacks, and virtual machine-based appliances face performance bottlenecks, ease of bypass, delayed threat detection, and user inconvenience.
Innovation Solution
A system that delivers executable files securely by wrapping them in a protective manner and running them in a sandbox environment on client systems, where behavior analysis is performed, using a network appliance with an interceptor and packer to analyze and isolate potential threats.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If all threats are executed and analyzed in the appliance, then threat detection capability is improved, but appliance performance becomes a bottleneck
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the threat analysis process into two parts: initial analysis in the appliance and sandbox execution on client systems. This distributes the computational load and prevents the appliance from becoming a performance bottleneck while maintaining comprehensive threat detection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces sandbox wrappers as an intermediary layer between the appliance and client systems. These wrappers enable remote sandbox execution, allowing threats to be analyzed in isolated environments without overloading the appliance's processing capacity.
2Reliability
If virtual machine based analysis is used, then threat analysis capability is improved, but it can be bypassed easily by virtual machine detection
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses sandbox wrappers as an intermediary that executes threats in isolated environments without exposing virtual machine characteristics. This intermediary layer prevents malware from detecting the virtualized environment, eliminating the bypass vulnerability while maintaining analysis capability.
3Device complexity
If threats are analyzed in a virtual machine appliance, then centralized security management is improved, but users have to wait until analysis completes before using executable files
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary wrapping of executable files with sandbox capabilities before delivery to client systems. This preliminary action enables local sandbox execution, allowing users to immediately use files while security analysis continues in the background, eliminating waiting time while maintaining centralized management.
4Ease of manufacture
If signature-based security solutions are used, then implementation simplicity is improved, but they cannot defend against Zero-day and APT attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces sandbox wrappers as an intermediary layer that enables behavior-based analysis of unknown threats. This intermediary mechanism allows the system to detect Zero-day and APT attacks through sandbox execution while maintaining implementation simplicity through automated wrapping and analysis processes.
Data Source
AI summary
There is provided a network appliance, methods and systems which intercept web and email traffic, extract executables, compare the executables with a policy and wrap the executables. Then, the wrapped executables are delivered to a client system in a manner to protect the network and end point devices, where the wrapped executables are run in a sandbox with all file system, registry accesses, communication and traffic isolated.