Shadow Device for Mobile Security
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Users face significant challenges in identifying and protecting against phishing, malware, and ransomware attacks, leading to substantial economic losses due to time spent on remediation, data loss, and ransom payments.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that create a virtual 'shadow device' identical to the user's device, stored in the cloud, which emulates user interactions to detect and mitigate malicious activities, providing virtual firewall protection and using dummy data to safeguard user identity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If users manually identify and protect against malicious activities, then user control and awareness are maintained, but users suffer significant economic losses and time consumption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary shadow device that acts as a mediator between the user device and malicious threats. The shadow device replicates user interactions and autonomously tests suspicious links, attachments, and files without exposing the user device or user time to actual malicious content, thereby providing reliable protection while eliminating remediation time losses.
Solution Approach 2:
The shadow device performs preliminary actions by proactively testing suspicious content before it can harm the user device. By pre-evaluating malicious links, attachments, and files in a controlled virtual environment, the system prevents attacks before they reach the user, eliminating the need for post-attack remediation and reducing time loss.
2Productivity
If users directly open suspicious links or attachments, then immediate access to content is achieved, but user devices are exposed to malware and ransomware attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual copy (shadow device) of the user device that replicates all interactions with suspicious content. Instead of opening malicious links or attachments directly on the user device, the shadow device copies and tests these interactions in isolation, allowing users to safely access content information while blocking malicious payloads from reaching the actual user device.
Solution Approach 2:
The shadow device serves as an intermediary layer between the user device and suspicious content. It receives and processes suspicious links and attachments, evaluating their safety before any content access is granted to the user device. This intermediary mechanism enables productive content access while filtering out harmful factors.
3Measurement precision
If a shadow device is created to detect malicious activity, then detection capability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The shadow device is implemented as a virtual copy of the user device, replicating its hardware and software environment. This copying approach enables precise detection of malicious activity by maintaining identical interaction patterns, while the virtualization technology abstracts the complexity of creating and managing the duplicate system architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The shadow device serves multiple functions simultaneously: it replicates user interactions, tests suspicious content, detects malicious activity, and provides security analysis. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional virtual system, the patent improves detection precision while managing overall system complexity through functional integration.
Data Source
AI summary
A user device receives a communication that contains a link or an attachment and sends the link or the attachment to a virtual user device stored externally with respect to the user device. Actions to be performed with respect to the user device are executed on the virtual user device. The virtual user device determines whether the link or attachment is malicious. The user device receives an indication of whether the link or the attachment is malicious and displays an indication that the link or the attachment is safe to open when the link or attachment is not malicious.