Cisco Technology, Inc.

Vincent E Parla

Kyle Andrew Donald Mestery

Andrew Zawadowskiy

Oleg Bessonov

David A McGrew

Peter Scott Davis

Todd Short

Andrzej Kielbasinski

Valentiu Vlad Santau

Blake Harrell Anderson

Martin Grill

Jan Jusko

Martin Vejman

Thomas Szigeti

Ashok Krishnaji Moghe

Philip John Steuart Gladstone

Doron Levari

Donovan O'Hara

Antonio Martin

Christopher Fitzgerald

Marc Tardif

Vlad Santau

Timothy Steven Champagne, Jr

Kerry Hannigan Munz

Hendrikus G P Bosch

Nancy Cam-Winget

John Michael Lake

Hari Shankar

Ian James Wells

Scott Roy Fluhrer

Mohammed Hawari

Jerome Tollet

Rahim Lalani

Venkatesh Narsipur Gautam

Aloys Augustin

Dany J Rochefort

Timothy Steven Champagne

Constantinos Kleopa

David James McCowan

Danxiang Li

Jason M Perry

Stephen Craig Connors, Jr

David Mcgrew

Peter Moss

Cullen Frishman Jennings

Rajvardhan Somraj Deshmukh

Eli John Gelasco

Paul Michael Tillotson

Brian Henry Pescatore

Alok Mittal

David Brownhill

Heng-Chun Chen

Kevin J Bergquist

Andrey Zawadowskiy

Tariq Ahmed Farhan

Ido Tamir

Adam Bragg

Thomas Brennan Gillis, Jr

Gerald N A Selvam

Alessandro Duminuco

Hendrikus GP Bosch

Julien Barbot

Jeffrey Michael Napper

Sape Jurriën Mullender

Techniques and systems described herein relate to monitoring executions of computer instructions on computing devices based on learning and generating a control flow directed graph. The techniques and systems include determining a learned control flow directed graph for a program and subsequently determining valid target destinations for transitions within the program. The instructions of the program may be executed by determining a destination for a transition, performing the transition when the destination is included in the list of valid target destinations, and performing a secondary action when the destination is not included in the list of valid target destinations.

Control flow integrity instruction pointer patching

Techniques for combining independent sessions between application(s) and a VPN, proxy service, or similar system, including inner protocol sessions (e.g., such as QUIC, etc.), coming from a single device to form a single logical session, where the single logical session could share a single authentication/authorization token are described. The techniques include receiving, from a device within a network, a request for a first application to access a service associated with the proxy service or the VPN, sending, to the device, a first authentication request, and receiving, from the device, a message including a token. The techniques may further include authenticating, by the proxy service or the VPN, the token using a unique identifier associated with the device and enabling, by the proxy service or the VPN, the device to access the service via a first session flow.

Authentication (AuthN) and authorization (AuthZ) binding for secure network access

A system and method are provided for placing network functions among respective locations in a network. The locations at which the network functions are placed can be nodes and network devices within the network. These nodes can be selected, e.g., based on which network devices have available capacity and or specialized hardware (e.g., accelerator sin a data processing units (DPUs)) that is optimized for particular network functions. The network functions can include an inline network function that is provisioned directly in a data plane of one of the network devices (e.g., in-lined directly in a hardware offload device without a virtual machine and without a container). The decision of where to place the network functions can be based on a performance metric (e.g., representing available computational/memory resources at the network nodes) and/or a network-function metric (e.g., representing consumed computational/memory resources by the network functions) to improve system performance.

Network security functions for dynamic construction and programmatic placement

Techniques and systems described herein relate to monitoring executions of computer instructions on computing devices based on learning and generating a control flow directed graph. The techniques and systems include determining a learned control flow directed graph for a process executed on the computing system. A system call is identified during execution of the process as well as a predetermined number of transitions leading to the system call. A validity of the transitions leading the system call is determined based on the learned control flow directed graph and the computing system may perform an action based on the validity.

Inline control flow monitor with enforcement

Techniques and systems described herein relate to monitoring executions of computer instructions on computing devices based on learning and generating a control flow directed graph. The techniques and systems include determining an observation phase for a process or application on a computing device. During the observation phase, CPU telemetry is determined and used to generate a control flow directed graph. After the control flow directed graph is generated, a monitoring phase may be entered where transfers of instruction pointers are monitored based on the control flow directed graph to identify invalid transfers.

Control flow integrity monitoring for applications running on platforms

Techniques and systems described herein relate to monitoring executions of computer instructions on computing devices based on learning and generating a control flow directed graph. The techniques and systems include determining telemetry representing execution of a process on a computing system and accessing a learned control flow diagram graph for the process. A transfer of an instruction pointer is determined based on the telemetry and a validity of the transfer is determined based on the learned control flow directed graph. If invalid, then an action to terminate the process is determined, otherwise the action may be allowed to execute when valid.

Control flow integrity enforcement for applications running on platforms

A system and computer-implemented method for routing an encrypted packet through a cloud enforcement network based on a metadata tag. The cloud enforcement network applies policy and routing attributions or tags outside of the encrypted packet payload in such a way as to not require an inner packet to first be decrypted. Traffic prioritization, data protection, and per application policies are achieved by using such metadata tags for internode routing without the need for DPI or decryption. Furthermore, the metadata itself can also be signed or encrypted depending on the provenance of the data. As such, applying meta-tagging external to an encrypted packet, the payload would not be needed to be decrypted during transit of the packet to express end-to-end policy and routing decisions.

Wire-speed routing and policy enforcement without DPI or decryption

Techniques for orchestrating workloads based on policy to operate in optimal host and/or network proximity in cloud-native environments are described herein. The techniques may include receiving flow data associated with network paths between workloads hosted by a cloud-based network. Based at least in part on the flow data, the techniques may include determining that a utilization of a network path between a first workload and a second workload is greater than a relative utilization of other network paths between the first workload and other workloads. The techniques may also include determining that reducing the network path would optimize communications between the first workload and the second workload without adversely affecting communications between the first workload and the other workloads. The techniques may also include causing at least one of a redeployment or a network path re-routing to reduce the networking proximity between the first workload and the second workload.

Cloud-native workload optimization

Techniques for utilizing a portion of a communication session identifier (e.g., a Session-ID, an SPI, a CID, a DCID, and/or the like) to indicate a target routing device (e.g., a VPN and/or ZTNA termination device) for establishing control plane session(s) and/or data plane session(s) at wire-speed in a networked computing environment. The routing device(s) of a networked computing environment may generate a communication session identifier and send the communication session identifier to the client device, such that subsequent packets send from the client device may be forwarded to the proper routing device indicated by the communication session identifier for establishment of one or more data plane sessions. Additionally, data plane sessions may be established using a Resumed Handshake rather than a full handshake that is typically required, as Session Resumption utilizes the assigned communication session identifier for mapping.

Using client-hello for intelligent routing and firewalling in multipath secure access systems

In one embodiment, a service receives traffic telemetry data regarding encrypted traffic sent by an endpoint device in a network. The service analyzes the traffic telemetry data to infer characteristics of an application on the endpoint device that generated the encrypted traffic. The service receives, from a monitoring agent on the endpoint device, application telemetry data regarding the application. The service determines that the application is evasive malware based on the characteristics of the application inferred from the traffic telemetry data and on the application telemetry data received from the monitoring agent on the endpoint device. The service initiates performance of a mitigation action in the network, after determining that the application on the endpoint device is evasive malware.

Correlating endpoint and network views to identify evasive applications

Techniques for using a secure access gateway to signal compute and/or network prioritization to individual streams within multiplexed sessions for zero-trust network access (ZTNA). A secure access gateway may be configured to identify weighting data and/or prioritization data associated with individual streams within the multiplexed session comprising various protocols (e.g., HTTP/2 and/or HTTP/3) and determine a gateway priority value. That is, the secure access gateway may be configured to prioritize certain types of traffic (user roles, resource types, etc.) over others, regardless of the protocol employed by the individual stream. The secure access gateway may then prioritize the processing (e.g., networking and/or computational resources) of a first stream having a more favorable gateway priority value than a second stream. Additionally, the secure access gateway may be configured to transmit indications of the gateway priority value to a target resource, such that the streams may be prioritized in the reverse direction.

Prioritization of individual channels within multiplexed streams for zero trust network access (ZTNA)

Techniques for using computer networking protocol extensions to route control-plane traffic and data-plane traffic associated with a common application are described herein. For instance, a traffic flow associated with an application may be established such that control-plane traffic is sent to a control-plane node associated with the application and data-plane traffic is sent to a data-plane node associated with the application. When a client device sends an authentication request to connect to the application, the control-plane node may send an indication of a hostname to be used by the client device to send data-plane traffic to the data-node. As such, when a packet including the hostname corresponding with the data-plane node is received, the packet may be forwarded to the data-plane node.

Routing application control and data-plane traffic in support of cloud-native applications

Techniques for dynamically establishing, pausing, and/or terminating secure communication sessions. The techniques may include, detecting an occurrence of an authentication trigger event on a computing device and causing a user of the computing device to be authenticated for access to a resource that is to be accessed via a secure communication session. Based at least in part on authenticating the user for access to the resource, a token may be stored in a location that is accessible to a headend appliance associated with the secure communication session. The token may indicate that the user of the computing device is authenticated for access to the resource. In this way, at least partially responsive to detecting an occurrence of a networking trigger event, the secure communication session may be established between the computing device and the headend appliance to provide the computing device with access to the resource.

Dynamic user authentication and traffic steering

This disclosure describes techniques for enforcing conditional access to network services. In an example method, a first computing device detects a second device operating in a per-flow authorization mode. The first device receives a first request from a second computing device to communicate with a third computing device using a first network flow and determines that the first flow is authorized (e.g., because of an active past authentication and/or the third device's authentication exemption). Data associated with the first request is transmitted to the third device. The first device then receives a second request to communicate with a fourth computing device using a second network flow and determines that the second flow is not authorized (e.g., because it is not associated with an active past authentication and/or the fourth device is not exempt from authentication). Data associated with the second request is not transmitted to the fourth device.

Enforcing conditional access to network services based on authorization statuses associated with network flows

Techniques for auto tuning keepalive packets intervals to an optimal interval are described. A remote secure session between a client device and a server over a network is established. A determination is made to identify an optimal keepalive interval for sending packets to keep the remote secure session alive over the network, the optimal keepalive interval defining an amount of time between sending of packets that keep a connection open through middleboxes in the network. Keepalive test probes are transmitted by the client device and to the server at different time intervals. An optimal keepalive interval is determined based at least in part on the keepalive test probes transmitted at the different intervals. The client device transmits information indicating the optimal keepalive interval to the server. Finally, the client device transmits keepalive packets according to the optimal keepalive interval.

Autotuning optimal keepalive intervals for secure sessions

Growing community of inventors

North Hampton, NH, United States of America

Vincent E Parla