Vmware, Inc.

Nicira, Inc.

Sushruth Gopal

Jayant Jain

Anirban Sengupta

Rick Lund

Alok S Tiagi

Ly Loi

Russell Lu

Subrahmanyam Manuguri

Sirisha Myneni

Jingmin Zhou

Yong Wang

Sushil Kumar Singh

Michael Parsa

Deepa Kalani

Davide Celotto

Josh Swerdlow

A method comprises: in response to detecting a new expression in a policy rule, updating a global version number to a new value; identifying a particular IP address that corresponds to an FQDN matching on the new expression; storing an entry comprising the particular IP address, the new expression, and an entry version number in a first data structure, the entry version number being assigned the new value; in response to detecting a new connection to a destination IP address: finding a matching entry in the first data structure corresponding to the destination IP address; determining whether the global version number matches the entry version number for the matching entry; and in response to determining that the global version number does not match the entry version number for the matching entry, sending update information to a slowpath process that associates an updated configuration information for the matching entry.

Methods for revalidating FQDN rulesets in a firewall

Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for performing intrusion detection operations on a host computer. The method receives a data message sent by a machine executing on the host computer. For the data message's flow, the method identifies a set of one or more contextual attributes that are different than layers 2, 3 and 4 header values of the data message. The identified set of contextual attributes are provided to an intrusion detection system (IDS) engine that executes on the host computer to enforce several IDS rules. The IDS engine uses the identified set of contextual attributes to identify a subset of the IDS rules that are applicable to the received data message and that do not include all of the IDS rules enforced by the IDS engine. The IDS engine then examines the subset of IDS rules for the received data message to ascertain whether the data message is associated with a network intrusion activity. For instance, in some embodiments, the IDS engine identifies one rule in the identified subset of IDS rules as matching the received data message, and then processes this rule to determine whether the data message is associated with an intrusion.

Efficiently performing intrusion detection

Some embodiments provide a novel method for collecting and analyzing attributes of data flows associated with machines executing on a plurality of host computers to detect anomalous behavior. In some embodiments, an anomalous behavior is detected for at least one particular flow associated with at least one machine executing on the host computer. In some embodiments, anomaly detection is based on the context data from the guest introspection agent and deep packet inspection. An identifier of the detected anomalous behavior is stored, in some embodiments. The stored attributes are provided, in some embodiments, to a server for further analysis.

Offloading anomaly detection from server to host

The method for implementing mechanisms for Layer 7 context accumulation for enforcing Layers 4, 7, and verb-based rules is presented. The method comprises: receiving stream data, and identifying a packet in the stream. If the packet includes Layer 7 headers: for each Layer 7 header: determining content of the packet identified by a Layer 7 header's identifier; and parsing the content to extract firewall input data. If one or more rules at least partially match the firewall input data, determining that a particular rule also includes additional information that cannot be found in the firewall input data; performing a DPI on the content to determine whether at least a portion of the additional information is found in the content; extracting additional input data from the content and adding it to the firewall input data; and applying the rules to the firewall input data to process the packet.

Mechanisms for layer 7 context accumulation for enforcing layer 4, layer 7 and verb-based rules

Some embodiments provide a novel method for collecting and reporting attributes of data flows associated with machines executing on a plurality of host computers to an analysis appliance. Each host computer, in some embodiments, is responsible for collecting and reporting attributes of data flows associated with machines executing on a host computer. In some embodiments, the host computer includes a flow exporter that processes and publishes flow data to the analysis appliance, a set of agents for collecting context data relating to the flows from machines executing on the host, a set of additional modules that provide additional context data, an anomaly detection engine that analyzes flow data and context data and provides additional context data, and a context exporter for processing and publishing context data to the analysis appliance.

Host-based flow aggregation

Some embodiments provide a novel method for collecting and reporting attributes of data flows associated with machines executing on a plurality of host computers to an analysis appliance. Each host computer, in some embodiments, is responsible for collecting and reporting attributes of data flows associated with machines executing on a host computer. The host computer, in some embodiments, first eliminates duplicative flow group records and then aggregates the flow data according to a set of received keys that specify attributes that define the aggregation. For example, a simple key that specifies a set of machine identifiers (e.g., a VM ID) as attribute values will, for each machine identifier, aggregate all flows with that machine identifier into a single aggregated flow group record. In some embodiments, the host computer includes a flow exporter that processes and publishes flow data to the analysis appliance.

Using keys to aggregate flow attributes at host

Some embodiments provide a method that receives a packet, having a set of one or more layer 7 (L7) expressions, from a datapath. The method identifies a set of datapath firewall rules that match on expressions in the set of expressions. The method provides identifiers for the datapath firewall rules of the identified set to the datapath. The datapath uses the identifiers and additional packet header data to determine a matching firewall rule from the set of datapath firewall rules.

Firewall rules with expression matching

Certain embodiments described herein are generally directed to deterministic load balancing of processing encapsulated encrypted data packets at a destination tunnel endpoint. In some embodiments, an IPSec component residing within a destination tunnel endpoint is configured to select a CPU core ID of a virtual CPU using a CPU selection function. In some embodiments, the IPSec component selects an SPI value corresponding to the CPU core ID. In some embodiments, the IPsec component indicates the SPI value to a source tunnel endpoint for use in establishing an in-bound security association, wherein the in-bound security association is used by the source tunnel endpoint to encrypt a data packet received from the source endpoint and destined for the destination endpoint.

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Sushruth Gopal