International Business Machines Corporation

Matthias Neugschwandtner

Anil Kurmus

Alessandro Sorniotti

Marc Philippe Stoecklin

Jiyong Jang

Dhilung Hang Kirat

Anton Beitler

Elli Androulaki

Angelo De Caro

USB traffic is intercepted between a USB device and a computer system. It is determined whether the USB device has previously had a policy associated with it as to whether USB traffic from the device should be blocked, allowed, or sanitized. In response to not having a previous policy for the USB device, a request is made for a user to be prompted to provide a policy of one of block, allow, or sanitize for the USB device. In response to a user-provided-policy, one of the following are performed: blocking the traffic, allowing the traffic, or sanitizing the traffic between the USB device and the computer system. Apparatus, methods, and computer program products are disclosed.

Protecting computer systems from malicious USB devices via a USB firewall

An example operation may include one or more of determining a proposal associated with a first blockchain member and a second blockchain member is present in a pending notification stored on a blockchain, invoking a receiving function of a smart contract, receiving a private key from the second blockchain member to access the proposal stored in the blockchain, retrieving all pending notifications in the blockchain, and iterating decryption attempts, using the private key, over all blockchain transactions including the pending notifications to determine whether any of the pending notifications include the proposal for the second blockchain member.

Performing bilateral negotiations on a blockchain

The invention is notably directed to a computer-implemented method for performing safety check operations. The method comprises steps that are implemented while executing a computer program, which is instrumented with safety check operations. As a result, this computer program forms a sequence of ordered instructions. Such instructions comprise safety check operation instructions, in addition to generic execution instructions and system inputs. System inputs allow the executing program to interact with an operating system, which manages resources for the computer program to execute. A series of instructions are identified while executing the computer program. Namely, a first instruction is identified in the sequence, as one of the safety check operation instructions, in view of its subsequent execution. After having identified the first instruction, a second instruction is identified in the sequence. The second instruction is identified as one of the generic computer program instructions. Execution of the second instruction identified is started, irrespective of a completion status of the first instruction. Next, and after having identified the second instruction, a third instruction is identified in the sequence. The third instruction is identified as one as one of the system inputs. There, completion of execution of the first instruction (the safety check operation instruction) is required prior to completing execution of the third instruction (the system input). The invention is further directed to related computerized systems and computer program products.

Computerized method and systems for performing deferred safety check operations

Separating data of trusted and untrusted data types in a memory of a computer during execution of a software program. Assigning mutually separated memory regions in the memory, namely, for each of the data types, a memory region for storing any data of the respective data type, and an additional memory region for storing any data which cannot be uniquely assigned to one of the data types. For each allocation instruction, performing a memory allocation including linking the allocation instruction to at least one data source, generating instruction-specific context information, evaluating the data source to determine the data type, associating the data type with the context information, based on the context information, assigning the allocation instruction to the memory region assigned to the evaluated data type, and allocating memory for storing data from the data source in the assigned memory region.

Memory categorization

Communications are intercepted between a universal serial bus (USB) device and a host, at least by implementing first device firmware of the USB device. The USB device contains its own second device firmware. Using at least the implemented first device firmware, intercepted communications from the USB device toward the host are sanitized. The sanitizing is performed so that no communication from the USB device is directly forwarded to the host and instead only sanitized communications are forwarded to the host. Methods, apparatus, and computer program products are disclosed.

Growing community of inventors

Zurich, Switzerland

Matthias Neugschwandtner