Patents Assigned to CENTRIPETAL NETWORKS, INC.
  • Patent number: 11316876
    Abstract: A threat intelligence gateway (TIG) may protect TCP/IP networks from network (e.g., Internet) threats by enforcing certain policies on in-transit packets that are crossing network boundaries. The policies may be composed of packet filtering rules with packet-matching criteria derived from cyber threat intelligence (CTI) associated with Internet threats. These CTI-derived packet-filtering rules may be created offline by policy creation and management servers, which may distribute the policies to subscribing TIGs that subsequently enforce the policies on in-transit packets. Each packet filtering rule may specify a disposition that may be applied to a matching in-transit packet, such as deny/block/drop the in-transit packet or pass/allow/forward the in-transit packet, and also may specify directives that may be applied to a matching in-transit packet, such as log, capture, spoof-tcp-rst, etc.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 22, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2022
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Jonathan R. Rogers, Vincent Mutolo, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 11316823
    Abstract: Network devices that are inserted inline into network links and process in-transit packets may significantly improve their packet-throughput performance by not assigning L3 IP addresses and L2 MAC addresses to their network interfaces and thereby process packets through a logical fast path that bypasses the slow path through the operating system kernel. When virtualizing such Bump-In-The-Wire (BITW) devices for deployment into clouds, the network interfaces must have L3 IP and L2 MAC addresses assigned to them. Thus, packets are processed through the slow path of a virtual BITW device, significantly reducing the performance. By adding new logic to the virtual BITW device and/or configuring proxies, addresses, subnets, and/or routing tables, a virtual BITW device can process packets through the fast path and potentially improve performance accordingly. For example, the virtual BITW device may be configured to enforce a virtual path (comprising the fast path) through the virtual BITW device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 5, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2022
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Richard Goodwin, Paul Sprague, Peter Geremia, Sean Moore
  • Patent number: 11290424
    Abstract: Methods and systems are disclosed for integrating cyber threat intelligence (CTI), threat metadata, and threat intelligence gateways with analysis systems to form efficient and effective system for active, proactive, and reactive network protection. A network gateway may be composed of multiple stages. A first stage may include a threat intelligence gateway (TIG). A second stage may include one or more cyber analysis systems that ingest TIG-filtered communications and associated threat metadata signals. A third stage may include network protection logic that determines which protective actions. The gateway may be provisioned and configured with rules that specify the network protection policies to be enforced. The gateway may ingest all communications flowing between the protected network and the unprotected network.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 8, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2022
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Jess Parnell, Jonathan R. Rogers
  • Patent number: 11233777
    Abstract: Systems, devices, and methods are disclosed for selectively decrypting SSL/TLS communications. Contents of the decrypted communications that may result in some action; for example, to terminate the communications, or to log and store the plaintext packets of the communications for subsequent content inspection and analysis. A SSL/TLS proxy may examine the information contained in the TLS handshake protocol and/or examine other information associated with the connection. Based on the examination, a proxy may determine whether or not to decrypt the encrypted communications. The proxy may take additional actions based on content inspection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 18, 2019
    Date of Patent: January 25, 2022
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventor: Sean Moore
  • Patent number: 11159546
    Abstract: A threat intelligence gateway (TIG) may protect TCP/IP networks from network (e.g., Internet) threats by enforcing certain policies on in-transit packets that are crossing network boundaries. The policies may be composed of packet filtering rules with packet-matching criteria derived from cyber threat intelligence (CTI) associated with Internet threats. These CTI-derived packet-filtering rules may be created offline by policy creation and management servers, which may distribute the policies to subscribing TIGs that subsequently enforce the policies on in-transit packets. Each packet filtering rule may specify a disposition that may be applied to a matching in-transit packet, such as deny/block/drop the in-transit packet or pass/allow/forward the in-transit packet, and also may specify directives that may be applied to a matching in-transit packet, such as log, capture, spoof-tcp-rst, etc.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: October 26, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Jonathan R. Rogers, Vincent Mutolo, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 11063909
    Abstract: Enterprise users' mobile devices typically access the Internet without being protected by the enterprise's network security policy, which exposes the enterprise network to Internet-mediated attack by malicious actors. This is because the conventional approach to protecting the mobile devices and associated enterprise network is to tunnel all of the devices' Internet communications to the enterprise network, which is very inefficient since typically only a very small percentage of Internet communications originating from an enterprise's mobile devices are communicating with Internet hosts that are associated with threats. In the present disclosure, the mobile device efficiently identifies which communications are associated with Internet threats, and tunnels only such identified traffic to the enterprise network, where actions may be taken to protect the enterprise network.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2021
    Date of Patent: July 13, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 11012415
    Abstract: Aspects of this disclosure relate to filtering network data transfers. In some variations, multiple packets may be received. A determination may be made that a portion of the packets have packet header field values corresponding to a packet filtering rule. Responsive to such a determination, an operator specified by the packet filtering rule may be applied to the portion of packets having the packet header field values corresponding to the packet filtering rule. A further determination may be made that one or more of the portion of the packets have one or more application header field values corresponding to one or more application header field criteria specified by the operator. Responsive to such a determination, at least one packet transformation function specified by the operator may be applied to the one or more of the portion of the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventor: Sean Moore
  • Patent number: 11012417
    Abstract: A packet gateway may protect TCP/IP networks by enforcing security policies on in-transit packets that are crossing network boundaries. The policies may include packet filtering rules derived from cyber threat intelligence (CTI). The rapid growth in the volume of CTI and in the size of associated CTI-derived policies, coupled with ever-increasing network link speeds and network traffic volume, may cause the costs of sufficient computational resources to be prohibitive. To efficiently process packets, a packet gateway may be provided with at least one probabilistic data structure, such as a Bloom filter, for testing packets to determine if packet data may match a packet filtering rule. Packet filtering rules may be grouped into subsets of rules, and a data structure may be provided for determining a matching subset of rules associated with a particular packet.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2019
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Jonathan R. Rogers, Steven Rogers
  • Patent number: 11012474
    Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting a secured network are presented. For example, one or more packet security gateways may be associated with a security policy management server. At each packet security gateway, a dynamic security policy may be received from the security policy management server, packets associated with a network protected by the packet security gateway may be received, and at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy may be performed on the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 21, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Rogers, Sean Moore, David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 11012414
    Abstract: The attack vectors for some denial-of-service cyber attacks on the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) are bad, bogus, or unregistered domain name DNS requests to resolve domain names that are not registered in the DNS. Some other cyber attacks steal sensitive data by encoding the data in bogus domain names, or domain names otherwise not registered in the DNS, that are transferred across networks in bogus DNS requests. A DNS gatekeeper may filter in-transit packets containing DNS requests and may efficiently determine if a request's domain name is registered in the DNS. When the domain name is not registered in the DNS, the DNS gatekeeper may take one of a plurality of protective actions. The DNS gatekeeper drops requests determined not to be legitimate, which may prevent an attack.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 22, 2019
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Jonathan R. Rogers, Steven Rogers
  • Patent number: 11012459
    Abstract: A packet-filtering device may receive packet-filtering rules configured to cause the packet-filtering device to identify packets corresponding to network-threat indicators. The packet-filtering device may receive packets and, for each packet, may determine that the packet corresponds to criteria specified by a packet-filtering rule. The criteria may correspond to one or more of the network-threat indicators. The packet-filtering device may apply an operator specified by the packet-filtering rule. The operator may be configured to cause the packet-filtering device to either prevent the packet from continuing toward its destination or allow the packet to continue toward its destination.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: David K. Ahn, Keith A. George, Peter P. Geremia, Pierre Mallett, III, Sean Moore, Robert T. Perry, Jonathan R. Rogers
  • Patent number: 10951660
    Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting a secured network are presented. For example, one or more packet security gateways may be associated with a security policy management server. At each packet security gateway, a dynamic security policy may be received from the security policy management server, packets associated with a network protected by the packet security gateway may be received, and at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy may be performed on the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 23, 2020
    Date of Patent: March 16, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Rogers, Sean Moore, David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 10944721
    Abstract: Enterprise users' mobile devices typically access the Internet without being protected by the enterprise's network security policy, which exposes the enterprise network to Internet-mediated attack by malicious actors. This is because the conventional approach to protecting the mobile devices and associated enterprise network is to tunnel all of the devices' Internet communications to the enterprise network, which is very inefficient since typically only a very small percentage of Internet communications originating from an enterprise's mobile devices are communicating with Internet hosts that are associated with threats. In the present disclosure, the mobile device efficiently identifies which communications are associated with Internet threats, and tunnels only such identified traffic to the enterprise network, where actions may be taken to protect the enterprise network.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2020
    Date of Patent: March 9, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 10944792
    Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting a secured network are presented. For example, one or more packet security gateways may be associated with a security policy management server. At each packet security gateway, a dynamic security policy may be received from the security policy management server, packets associated with a network protected by the packet security gateway may be received, and at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy may be performed on the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 24, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 9, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Rogers, Sean Moore, David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia
  • Patent number: 10931797
    Abstract: A computing system may identify packets received by a network device from a host located in a first network and may generate log entries corresponding to the packets received by the network device. The computing system may identify packets transmitted by the network device to a host located in a second network and may generate log entries corresponding to the packets transmitted by the network device. Utilizing the log entries corresponding to the packets received by the network device and the log entries corresponding to the packets transmitted by the network device, the computing system may correlate the packets transmitted by the network device with the packets received by the network device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 21, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 23, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia, Pierre Mallett, III, Sean Moore, Robert T. Perry
  • Patent number: 10924456
    Abstract: A packet-filtering system described herein may be configured to filter packets with encrypted hostnames in accordance with one or packet-filtering rules. The packet-filtering system may resolve a plaintext hostname from ciphertext comprising an encrypted Server Name Indication (eSNI) value. The packet-filtering system may resolve the plaintext hostname using a plurality of techniques. Once the plaintext hostname is resolved, the packet-filtering system may then use the plaintext hostname to determine whether the packets are associated with one or more threat indicators. If the packet-filtering system determines that the packets are associated with one or more threat indicators, the packet-filtering system may apply a packet filtering operation associated with the packet-filtering rules to the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 14, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 16, 2021
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Vincent Mutolo, Jonathan R. Rogers
  • Patent number: 10862909
    Abstract: Packets may be received by a packet security gateway. Responsive to a determination that an overload condition has occurred in one or more networks associated with the packet security gateway, a first group of packet filtering rules may be applied to at least some of the packets. Applying the first group of packet filtering rules may include allowing at least a first portion of the packets to continue toward their respective destinations. Responsive to a determination that the overload condition has been mitigated, a second group of packet filtering rules may be applied to at least some of the packets. Applying the second group of packet filtering rules may include allowing at least a second portion of the packets to continue toward their respective destinations.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 19, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 8, 2020
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Sean Moore, Steven Rogers, John Daniel Scoggins, Sr.
  • Patent number: 10785266
    Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting a secured network are presented. For example, one or more packet security gateways may be associated with a security policy management server. At each packet security gateway, a dynamic security policy may be received from the security policy management server, packets associated with a network protected by the packet security gateway may be received, and at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy may be performed on the packets. Performing the at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy on the packets may include performing at least one packet transformation function other than forwarding or dropping the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 27, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 22, 2020
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Rogers, Sean Moore
  • Patent number: 10757126
    Abstract: A packet-filtering device may receive packet-filtering rules configured to cause the packet-filtering device to identify packets corresponding to network-threat indicators. The packet-filtering device may receive packets and, for each packet, may determine that the packet corresponds to criteria specified by a packet-filtering rule. The criteria may correspond to one or more of the network-threat indicators. The packet-filtering device may apply an operator specified by the packet-filtering rule. The operator may be configured to cause the packet-filtering device to either prevent the packet from continuing toward its destination or allow the packet to continue toward its destination.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 9, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 25, 2020
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: David K. Ahn, Keith A. George, Peter P. Geremia, Pierre Mallett, III, Sean Moore, Robert T. Perry, Jonathan R. Rogers
  • Patent number: 10749906
    Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting a secured network are presented. For example, one or more packet security gateways may be associated with a security policy management server. At each packet security gateway, a dynamic security policy may be received from the security policy management server, packets associated with a network protected by the packet security gateway may be received, and at least one of multiple packet transformation functions specified by the dynamic security policy may be performed on the packets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 21, 2019
    Date of Patent: August 18, 2020
    Assignee: Centripetal Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Rogers, Sean Moore, David K. Ahn, Peter P. Geremia