Network Device Identification via Web Page Hashing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing network security systems face challenges in identifying and classifying network devices, particularly routers, which can affect the compatibility and configuration of private network security appliances, leading to potential vulnerabilities and security threats.
Innovation Solution
A method involving accessing an HTTP server on network devices to evaluate web pages, tokenize them, generate local sensitivity hashes, and compare these hashes to identify devices by grouping similar pages, determining device identity and compatibility with security appliances.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If ARP spoofing is used to insert the security appliance between private network devices and the router, then the security appliance can monitor and filter traffic, but successful setup and configuration becomes dependent on the type of router and other devices on the private network
Solution Approach 1:
The security appliance automatically discovers and identifies router devices on the private network by analyzing their web pages, and autonomously determines compatibility without requiring manual configuration or user intervention about router types
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the identification approach from relying on router type specifications to analyzing actual web page content characteristics, transforming the identification parameters from device metadata to observable page features
2Reliability
If device identification is not performed, then setup and configuration may fail due to incompatibility, but performing identification requires analyzing and processing web pages from multiple devices
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential identifying features from web pages (such as specific HTML elements, text patterns, or structural characteristics) rather than analyzing the entire page content, simplifying the identification process while maintaining accuracy
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates simplified representations or profiles of router web pages that capture identifying characteristics, allowing for efficient comparison and matching without requiring full page analysis each time
Data Source
AI summary
A method of identifying network devices such as a router includes accessing an HTTP server on at least one network device, and evaluating a web page served by the device's HTTP server. The web page is evaluated to determine whether it is similar to a page group from a plurality of page groups, where each of the plurality of page groups comprises a group of web pages similar to other pages in the page group. If the evaluated web page is determined similar to a page group, the page group most similar to the evaluated web page is identified as corresponding to the identity of the network device.