Security Countermeasures for Web Server Resource Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Web servers face challenges in efficiently handling increasing online content demands while maintaining security, as they must differentiate between benign and malicious client devices, leading to unnecessary processing overhead and potential interference with legitimate traffic.
Innovation Solution
A security system that applies countermeasures to resources served to computing devices based on a level of trust established through authentication, using security tokens to select appropriate countermeasures that disrupt or detect malicious exploitation, and polymorphic countermeasures to reduce predictability and thwart malware interactions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security countermeasures are applied to all web server requests, then security protection against malware is improved, but processing overhead and latency increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different security countermeasure levels to different client devices based on their trust status. Trusted devices receive minimal or no countermeasures, while untrusted devices receive full security processing. This local differentiation resolves the contradiction by concentrating security resources only where needed rather than uniformly applying them to all requests.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments client devices into trusted and untrusted groups based on authentication tokens. This segmentation allows the system to apply security countermeasures selectively to the untrusted segment, reducing overall processing overhead while maintaining security protection for the vulnerable segment.
2Reliability
If security countermeasures are applied to all web server requests, then security protection against malware is improved, but legitimate traffic is interfered with
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements local quality by applying security countermeasures only to untrusted devices while allowing trusted devices to access resources without interference. This selective application maintains ease of operation for legitimate traffic from trusted sources while preserving security protection against malware from untrusted sources.
3Reliability
If polymorphic countermeasures are applied to content, then malware exploitation difficulty is increased, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies polymorphic countermeasures locally only to untrusted devices rather than universally. This means the complex polymorphic encoding is implemented only where needed for security, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining malware exploitation resistance for the vulnerable untrusted segment.
Data Source
AI summary
Among other things, this document describes a computer-implemented security method such as for authenticated selection of security countermeasures and for reliable identification of computing devices. The method can include receiving, by a computing system, a request from a computing device for an electronic resource. The computing system can identify a security token received from the device that made the request. Based on the security token, particular security countermeasures can be selected that are to be applied to the electronic resource to be served in response to the request. The countermeasures can be operable to interfere with an ability of malware to interact with the served electronic resource when the served electronic resource is on the computing device. Portions of the electronic resource that are to be executed on the computing device can be re-coded using the selected particular security countermeasures.