Google Inc.

University of Washington

Appliant Corporation

Brian N Bershad

David Erb

Alastair Wolman

Sarvar M Patel

Henry M Levy

Umesh Shankar

Daniel Dwight Grove

Andrei Kulik

Bodo Moller

Theodore H Romer

Geoffrey Michael Voelker

Dennis Chua Lee

John Bradley Chen

Wayne Anthony Wong

Amit Agarwal

Erkki Ville Juhani Aikas

Michael Mansfield Swift

Hank Levy

Emin Gun Sirer

J Bradley Chen

Robert Grimm

In aspect an application may be configured to issue a request to store an object, with the request including an object reference. A delegate may be configured to receive the request to store the object, determine a hosted storage service, from among multiple hosted storage services, and a corresponding access protocol based on the object reference, and store the object in the hosted storage service using the corresponding protocol.

Manipulating objects in hosted storage

A request to store a data object is received at a hosted storage service. The request includes the data object and an associated object reference. The object reference configured to enable retrieval of the data object from the hosted storage service. The data object is stored at the hosted storage service in association with the object reference. The data object is sent from the hosted storage service to a content delivery network node such that the data object is cached in and retrievable from the content delivery network node using the object reference.

Content delivery network

An encrypted resource is stored in association with an access control list. A request to retrieve the resource is received. The wrapped key and the authentication credentials are sent, from the application server system, to a key server system. An unencrypted version of the resource encryption key is received from the key server system if the key server system determines that the authentication credentials correspond to a user in the group of users identified by the group identifier. The stored encrypted resource is decrypted using the received unencrypted version of the resource encryption key to generate an unencrypted version of the resource. The unencrypted version of the resource is sent, from the application server system, to the client application.

Storing encrypted objects

A solution to the problem of maintaining application integrity when device drivers fail. This solution employs a new mechanism, the shadow driver, which is an operating system (OS) kernel agent that monitors communication between the OS kernel and the device driver it 'shadows.' When a device driver error occurs, the shadow driver acts in place of the failed device driver, intercepting and responding to calls from the OS kernel and the device driver during cleanup, unloading, reloading, and re-initialization of the failed device driver. Applications and the OS kernel are thus isolated from the failure. An initial embodiment was developed for use with the Linux&#x2122; OS and was tested with a dozen device drivers. Results demonstrate that shadow drivers successfully mask device driver failures from applications, impose minimal performance overhead, require no changes to existing applications and device drivers, and can be implemented with relatively little code.

Recovering device drivers

A program or program snippet is rewritten to conform to site-specific properties prior to being executed by a target host. The program or program snippet directed to a target host from a known or unknown source is either intercepted by a server before reaching the target host or can be redirected from the target host to the server to effect its rewriting. The program is parsed in its external representation, converting it to an internal representation that is inspected and analyzed with reference to a site-specific properties database. A summary of the program's properties is then compared to the site-specific properties database by a binary rewriting engine, which produces a rewritten program in an internal representation. If appropriate, the program or program snippet is rewritten to convert it to a format suitable for execution on the target host. Furthermore, certifications may be added to the rewritten program to mark that the rewritten program obeys site-specific constraints. The rewriting service thus produces a program in an appropriate target representation that conforms to site-specific properties. These properties may relate to security, auditing, optimization, monitoring, threading, and/or management of the rewritten program.

Process for rewriting executable content on a network server or desktop machine in order to enforce site specific properties

A method and system for identifying sets of instructions within a computer program, execution of which serve as an indicator for processing of a transaction by the computer program and that together comprise a witness set. The witness set may be employed to monitor execution of the computer program and detect processing of the transaction. Witness sets are constructed by iteratively filtering an initial set of instructions based on profile data collected during execution of the computer program.

Method and system for identifying instrumentation targets in computer programs related to logical transactions

An original software component is modified in accordance with a site's security policy provisions prior to being executed by a component system or computer at the site. The original software component is intercepted by an introspection service running on a server or on the component system prior to execution on the component system. The introspection service analyzes the software component by parsing it, and based on the information it determines, a security policy service instructs an interposition service how to modify the software component so that it conforms to the security policy service requirements. The interposition service thus produces a modified software component by inserting code for security initialization and for imposing security operations on the original component operations. When the modified software component is executed, an enforcement service follows the security operations that were injected into the software component, which instruct the enforcement service on associating component system objects with security identifiers. For example, a security identifier is associated with the software component. In addition, the enforcement service determines when and how to perform access checks, protection domain transfers, and auditing during execution of the modified software component. Any of the services noted above can be executed by the computer intended to execute the software component or by a separate server.

Process for transparently enforcing protection domains and access control as well as auditing operations in software components

A computer software tool used for automatically identifying code portions and data portions of a binary executable software program in which the code portions include machine instructions that are of arbitrary length. Software products are typically distributed as binary, executable files, which comprise a string of binary values. In general, an executable file has no structure or meaning, except as determined by its behavior when dynamically executed, one instruction at a time, by a digital computer. The software tool determines a set of addresses for any known code and data portions. The tool is then used to disassemble machine instructions, beginning at a starting address for each known code portion, to identify the target addresses of other code portions and other data portions. Other sections of the binary executable software program that could be either code or data are then analyzed to identify additionAL code and data portions. As new portions are identified, the steps are repeated, until no further code or data portions are identifiable. The binary executable software program may include a plurality of executable modules. The entry addresses for each executable module and any addresses for code portions and data portions referenced and identified by any debug address, any export address, and any relocation address is added to the set of addresses. The binary executable software program is then executed to dynamically identify other executable modules so that the set of addresses can be further extended.

Discovering code and data in a binary executable program

A method and procedure for modifying modules comprising a binary executable software program in such a way that, despite the transformations performed and the creation of new versions of the modules, the transformed program appears (to that program, including all of its components) as if it is running in the identical environment as the original program. The environment includes environment variables, the name of the program, the names of all of the dynamically loaded library (DLL) files that the program references, the directory in which the program resides, and the current directory at the time the program started execution. When the program has been transformed, e.g., for the purposes of monitoring or measurement, the environment also includes the effective addresses of data and instruction references made by the program. By employing the present invention, a modified software program will have the same behavior as the original unmodified program from which it is derived, even though it and many of its environment characteristics have been changed.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Brian N Bershad