Discovering malicious locations in a public computer network

US8359651B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Trend Micro Incorporated · JP

Inventors

• Handong Wu · Los Angeles, US
• Alendry Ivan Macalintal · Temple City, US
• Andrew Purtell · San Fernando, US
• Andrew Lee · Enfield, GB
• Chenghuai Lu · Fremont, US
• Feike Hayo Hacquebord · Cupertino, US
• Yi-Fen Chen · Pasadena, US
• Raimund Alexander Genes · Jetzendorf, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: May 15, 2008
• Grant date: Jan 22, 2013
• Expiry date: Oct 24, 2031

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04L63/145
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A web threat protection system may receive candidate uniform resource locators (URLs) from several URL sources. The candidate URLs may be received in a submission database. At least a portion of the candidate URLs is selected for further investigation by sending crawlers to retrieve objects from the selected URLs. The retrieved objects may be analyzed to determine whether they are malicious or good (i.e., not malicious). The result of the analysis may be used to build a security states database that includes security information of the selected URLs. Good URLs may be included in a safe URL sphere, which may be used to navigate to good websites on the Internet.