Real-Time Process Validation for Progressive Gaming Servers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current progressive servers in slot machines only check for known files at power-up and fail to detect malicious files introduced later, making them vulnerable to fraudulent attacks that can compromise the integrity of progressive games.
Innovation Solution
A server system that validates gaming executables and processes in real-time using a processor, RAM, and network interface, with a real-time process validation executable to monitor and verify the integrity of processes associated with critical ports, ensuring only authorized processes are running during game play.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If real-time process validation is implemented, then security and integrity of progressive games are improved, but device complexity and validation time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary validation of gaming executables against a database of known good processes before allowing them to run. This advance preparation ensures that only authorized processes can execute, preventing malicious files from compromising the progressive game integrity without requiring complex real-time analysis during gameplay.
Solution Approach 2:
A validation executable is introduced as an intermediary component between the gaming executables and the server. This mediator checks each process against the validation database and returns a pass/fail decision, simplifying the overall system architecture while maintaining security. The intermediary handles the complexity of validation logic separately from the core gaming functions.
2Reliability
If real-time process validation is implemented, then detection of malicious files is improved, but processing time and system resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system validates gaming executables before they are allowed to execute, rather than continuously monitoring during runtime. This preliminary validation approach detects malicious files early in the process lifecycle, preventing them from causing harm while minimizing the time impact on actual game play. The validation database is pre-populated with known good process signatures.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of deeply analyzing the actual behavior of each gaming executable in real-time, the system creates and compares simplified process signatures or hashes as copies of the expected behavior. This copying approach allows rapid comparison against the validation database without the computational overhead of full behavioral analysis, significantly reducing processing time while maintaining detection accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
A server which provides game play services, such as game play services associated with progressive games, is described. The server provides the game play services to remote gaming machines via a network protocol and a network interface. The server is configured to monitor the network connections associated with the network protocol in real-time to ensure that only valid processes executing on the server are utilizing the network connections. In one embodiment, software ports, associated with the network protocol and utilized to provide the game play services, are monitored. The monitoring can prevent malicious programs from utilizing the network connections for fraudulent purposes.