Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kevin S Bauer

Richard W Skowyra

Hamed Okhravi

William W Streilein

Thomas R Hobson

David O Bigelow

Veer S Dedhia

System and methods for communicating across a network comprise: a database containing high level security rules for the network; computing devices communicating on the network; a security rule translation module; event sensors configured to monitor and detect one or more events occurring on or relating to the network, and in response thereto, provide to the security rule translation module an indication of occurrence for each of the one or more security events. The security rule translation module may associate the security rules with the security events corresponding to the received indication, and produce a low-level security rule based on data from the high-level security rule and the received indication of occurrence of the security events. The system may also include switches coupled to receive the low-level security rules from the security rule translation module and enforce the low-level security rules on the network.

Dynamic flow system

A system and method for the randomization of packet headers is disclosed. A controller is used to provide random values, also referred to as nonces, that replace the source and destination addresses that typically appear in a packet header. The controller also provides routing rules to the switches and routers in the network that allow these devices to properly route packets, even though the source and destination addresses are not present. In some embodiments, network devices that support software-defined networking (SDN) are employed. The number of times that a particular nonce is used may be variable. In some embodiments, a nonce is used for exactly one packet header. In this way, packets may traverse a network using nonces in place of actual source and destination addresses. Because the nonces are changed periodically, detection of traffic patterns is made significantly more difficult.

Packet header randomization

Growing community of inventors

Westford, MA, United States of America

Kevin S Bauer