Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Go Daddy Operating Company, LLC

Elissa E Murphy

John D Mehr

Lara Marie Sosnosky

Lili Cheng

Joshua T Goodman

Robert L Rounthwaite

George P Moromisato

Navjot Virk

Yan Valerie Leshinsky

Geoffrey John Hulten

Wayne Thayer

Manav Mishra

Marek Olszewski

Derek M Hazeur

Silas Boyd-Wickizer

James Robert Hamilton

Josh D Benaloh

Catherine Claire Marshall

Ryan Charles Colvin

Nina Kang

Gopalakrishnan Seshadrinathan

A domain name registrar may provide a service for a domain name registrant to automatically and without further action by the domain name registrant (other than possibly paying for the service) enable secure socket layer (SSL) for a domain name to a third party hosting service, even when the domain name registrar does not own or control the third party hosting service. The invention allows a user (that may or may not be the domain name registrant) to use the domain name registered to the domain name registrant to communicate with a domain name registrant account (possibly a website) on the third party hosting service via a proxy server. The communication between the user and the proxy server may be encrypted such as by the SSL protocol.

Enabling encrypted communications between a user and a third party hosting service via a proxy server

Notifying a registrant if communications between a user and a third party hosting service are not secure

The claimed subject matter relates to architectures for facilitating network-accessible or local backup or restore features in a manner that leverages event-oriented contextual information associated with one or more users of the data to be backed up or restored. In particular, a first restore-based architecture can interface with an associated second backup-based architecture that hosts or maintains a backup data store in order to retrieve a version of the data file that is desired by a user. Additionally, the first architecture can obtain a log of contextual event descriptions that can be aggregated by the second architecture or obtained independently from, e.g., a social networking service or a calendar application associated with the user. Thus, in addition to displaying time and date information associated with the desired version, the first architecture can provide the user with a social context of event from the social services feeds to aid the user in distinguishing between multiple versions of the data file.

Employing user-context in connection with backup or restore of data

Provided herein are systems and methodologies for highly efficient restoration in a network-based backup system. As described herein, differential-based analysis can be utilized such that a new complete differential is calculated based on signatures and/or other information relating to a given item to be restored prior to retrieving backup data. Based on the differential, only blocks determined to be unique between the current version of the item and the desired version are transmitted, which can then be merged with non-unique locally present blocks to obtain the fully restored version of the item. Further, a hybrid architecture can be employed, wherein signatures and/or data are stored at a global location within a network as well as one or more local peers. Accordingly, a backup client can obtain information necessary for restoration from either the global location or a nearby peer, thus further reducing latency and bandwidth consumption.

Differential file and system restores from peers and the cloud

The claimed subject matter relates to architectures for facilitating network-accessible or local backup or restore features in a manner that leverages event-oriented contextual information associated with one or more users of the data to be backed up or restored. In particular, a first restore-based architecture can interface with an associated second backup-based architecture that hosts or maintains a backup data store in order to retrieve a version of the data file that is desired by a user. Additionally, the first architecture can obtain a log of contextual event descriptions that can be aggregated by the second architecture or obtained independently from, e.g. a social networking service or a calendar application associated with the user. Thus, in addition to displaying time and date information associated with the desired version, the first architecture can provide the user with a social context of event from the social services feeds to aid the user in distinguishing between multiple versions of the data file.

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can determine costs associated with updating file formats. In particular, the architecture can interface with a network-accessible data storage service in order to determine a cost-benefit to the data storage service for a wide variety of conversion scenarios applicable to the particular topology of the data storage service. For example, the cost-benefit can differ for storage services configured according to a client-server model relative to storage services configured according to a distributed topology. Regardless, the architecture can identify a legacy format, select a converter for converting the legacy format to the updated format, and then determine the cost-benefit for a variety of conversion or migration scenarios.

Mitigation of obsolescence for archival services

Provided herein are systems and methodologies for bare metal machine restoration of a client computing environment over a network-based backup system. System recovery can be performed by performing a network boot from a predetermined server or set of servers on the Internet and/or an associated local network, followed by retrieving information relating to an operating system and/or environment of a system being recovered, such as incremental or full operating system images. Upon retrieval of information, the information can be used to conduct a full restore of the operating environment of the computing device. Additionally, a user can restore personal or other system data following rebuilding of the system operating environment. A cloud-based structure is provided herein as well as a hybrid peer-to-peer/cloud-based structure, wherein information used in a restore can be obtained from a global network location (e.g., cloud server(s)) and/or from one or more local peers.

Bare metal machine recovery

The claimed subject matter relates to a network-accessible, online data archival service with a data store for archiving data for clients of the archival service. The archival service can include an architecture that can facilitate perpetual sustainability and accessibility of data by conforming to a model. In particular, the model can describe or define a minimum set of extensible or pluggable components or modules needed to facilitate and guarantee sustainability of and accessibility to the data in perpetuity.

Perpetual archival of data

Bare metal machine recovery from the cloud

Disclosed are systems and methods that facilitate securing communication channels used in a challenge-response system to mitigate spammer intrusion or deception. The systems and methods make use of unique IDs that can be added to outbound messages originating from a sender, a recipient, and a third-party server. The IDs can be correlated according to the relevant parties. Thus, for example, a sender can add a signed ID to an outgoing message. A challenge sent back to the sender for that particular message can echo the same ID or a new ID derived from the original ID to allow a sender to verify that the challenge corresponds to an actual message. The IDs can include cookies as well to facilitate correlation of messages and to facilitate the retrieval of messages once a sender is determined to be legitimate.

Challenge response systems

The present invention provides a unique system and method that facilitates incrementally updating spam filters in near real time or real time. Incremental updates can be generated in part by difference learning. Difference learning involves training a new spam filter based on new data and then looking for the differences between the new spam filter and the existing spam filter. Differences can be determined at least in part by comparing the absolute values of parameter changes (weight changes of a feature between the two filters). Other factors such as frequency of parameters can be employed as well. In addition, available updates with respect to particular features or messages can be looked up using one or more lookup tables or databases. When incremental and/or feature-specific updates are available, they can be downloaded such as by a client for example. Incremental updates can be automatically provided or can be provided by request according to client or server preferences.

Incremental anti-spam lookup and update service

Disclosed are signature-based systems and methods that facilitate spam detection and prevention at least in part by calculating hash values for an incoming message and then determining a probability that the hash values indicate spam. In particular, the signatures generated for each incoming message can be compared to a database of both spam and good signatures. A count of the number of matches can be divided by a denominator value. The denominator value can be an overall volume of messages sent to the system per signature for example. The denominator value can be discounted to account for different treatments and timing of incoming messages. Furthermore, secure hashes can be generated by combining portions of multiple hashing components. A secure hash can be made from a combination of multiple hashing components or multiple combinations thereof. The signature based system can also be integrated with machine learning systems to optimize spam prevention.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Elissa E Murphy