Patents by Inventor Timothy William Burrell

Timothy William Burrell has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 12417106
    Abstract: Various technologies described herein pertain to enforcing control flow integrity by adding instrumentation when source code is compiled or binary code is rewritten. An indirect call to a control transfer target (e.g., in the source code, in the binary code, etc.) can be identified. Moreover, the instrumentation can be inserted prior to the indirect call. The instrumentation can use a bit from a bitmap maintained by a runtime to verify whether the control transfer target is valid. When an executable image that includes the inserted instrumentation runs, execution can be terminated and/or other appropriate actions can be taken when the control transfer target is determined to be invalid; alternatively, execution can continue when the control transfer target is determined to be valid.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2021
    Date of Patent: September 16, 2025
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Richard John Black, Timothy William Burrell, Miguel Oom Temudo de Castro, Manuel Silverio da Silva Costa, Kenneth Johnson, Matthew Ryan Miller
  • Publication number: 20240129323
    Abstract: Embodiments detect cyberattack campaigns against multiple cloud tenants by analyzing activity data to find sharing anomalies. Data that appears benign in a single tenant's activities may indicate an attack when the same or similar data is also found for additional tenants. Attack detection may depend on activity time frames, on how similar certain activities of different tenants are to one another, on how unusual it is for different tenants to share an activity, and on other factors. Sharing anomaly analysis may utilize hypergeometric probabilities or other statistical measures. Detection avoidance attempts using digital entity randomization are revealed and thwarted. Authorized vendors may be recognized, mooting anomalousness. Although data from multiple tenants is analyzed together for sharing anomalies while monitoring for attacks, tenant confidentiality and privacy are respected through technical and legal mechanisms. Mitigation is performed in response to an attack indication.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 6, 2023
    Publication date: April 18, 2024
    Inventors: Yaakov GARYANI, Moshe ISRAEL, Hani Hana NEUVIRTH, Ely ABRAMOVITCH, Amir KEREN, Timothy William BURRELL
  • Patent number: 11888870
    Abstract: Embodiments detect cyberattack campaigns against multiple cloud tenants by analyzing activity data to find sharing anomalies. Data that appears benign in a single tenant's activities may indicate an attack when the same or similar data is also found for additional tenants. Attack detection may depend on activity time frames, on how similar certain activities of different tenants are to one another, on how unusual it is for different tenants to share an activity, and on other factors. Sharing anomaly analysis may utilize hypergeometric probabilities or other statistical measures. Detection avoidance attempts using entity randomization are revealed and thwarted. Authorized vendors may be recognized, mooting anomalousness. Although data from multiple tenants is analyzed together for sharing anomalies while monitoring for attacks, tenant confidentiality and privacy are respected through technical and legal mechanisms. Mitigation is performed in response to an attack indication.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 4, 2021
    Date of Patent: January 30, 2024
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Yaakov Garyani, Moshe Israel, Hani Hana Neuvirth, Ely Abramovitch, Amir Keren, Timothy William Burrell
  • Publication number: 20230107335
    Abstract: Embodiments detect cyberattack campaigns against multiple cloud tenants by analyzing activity data to find sharing anomalies. Data that appears benign in a single tenant's activities may indicate an attack when the same or similar data is also found for additional tenants. Attack detection may depend on activity time frames, on how similar certain activities of different tenants are to one another, on how unusual it is for different tenants to share an activity, and on other factors. Sharing anomaly analysis may utilize hypergeometric probabilities or other statistical measures. Detection avoidance attempts using entity randomization are revealed and thwarted. Authorized vendors may be recognized, mooting anomalousness. Although data from multiple tenants is analyzed together for sharing anomalies while monitoring for attacks, tenant confidentiality and privacy are respected through technical and legal mechanisms. Mitigation is performed in response to an attack indication.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 4, 2021
    Publication date: April 6, 2023
    Inventors: Yaakov GARYANI, Moshe ISRAEL, Hani Hana NEUVIRTH, Ely ABRAMOVITCH, Amir KEREN, Timothy William BURRELL
  • Publication number: 20210326153
    Abstract: Various technologies described herein pertain to enforcing control flow integrity by adding instrumentation when source code is compiled or binary code is rewritten. An indirect call to a control transfer target (e.g., in the source code, in the binary code, etc.) can be identified. Moreover, the instrumentation can be inserted prior to the indirect call. The instrumentation can use a bit from a bitmap maintained by a runtime to verify whether the control transfer target is valid. When an executable image that includes the inserted instrumentation runs, execution can be terminated and/or other appropriate actions can be taken when the control transfer target is determined to be invalid; alternatively, execution can continue when the control transfer target is determined to be valid.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 30, 2021
    Publication date: October 21, 2021
    Inventors: Richard John Black, Timothy William Burrell, Miguel Oom Temudo de Castro, Manuel Silverio da Silva Costa, Kenneth Johnson, Matthew Ryan Miller
  • Patent number: 11003464
    Abstract: Various technologies described herein pertain to enforcing control flow integrity by adding instrumentation when source code is compiled or binary code is rewritten. An indirect call to a control transfer target (e.g., in the source code, in the binary code, etc.) can be identified. Moreover, the instrumentation can be inserted prior to the indirect call. The instrumentation can use a bit from a bitmap maintained by a runtime to verify whether the control transfer target is valid. When an executable image that includes the inserted instrumentation runs, execution can be terminated and/or other appropriate actions can be taken when the control transfer target is determined to be invalid; alternatively, execution can continue when the control transfer target is determined to be valid.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 19, 2012
    Date of Patent: May 11, 2021
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Richard John Black, Timothy William Burrell, Miguel Oom Temudo de Castro, Manuel Silverio da Silva Costa, Kenneth Johnson, Matthew Ryan Miller
  • Patent number: 8683583
    Abstract: The subject disclosure is directed towards preventing the exploitation by malicious code of object state corruption vulnerabilities, such as use-after-free vulnerabilities. An object class is configured with a secret cookie in a virtual function table of the object, e.g., inserted at compile time. An instrumentation check inserted in the program code evaluates the secret cookie to determine whether the object state has been corrupted before object access (e.g., a call to one of the object's methods) is allowed. If corrupted, access to the object is prevented by the instrumentation check. Another instrumentation check may be used to determine whether the object's virtual table pointer points to a location outside of the module that contains the legitimate virtual function table; if so, object access is prevented.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 2, 2010
    Date of Patent: March 25, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Matthew R. Miller, Kenneth D. Johnson, Timothy William Burrell
  • Publication number: 20130283245
    Abstract: Various technologies described herein pertain to enforcing control flow integrity by adding instrumentation when source code is compiled or binary code is rewritten. An indirect call to a control transfer target (e.g., in the source code, in the binary code, etc.) can be identified. Moreover, the instrumentation can be inserted prior to the indirect call. The instrumentation can use a bit from a bitmap maintained by a runtime to verify whether the control transfer target is valid. When an executable image that includes the inserted instrumentation runs, execution can be terminated and/or other appropriate actions can be taken when the control transfer target is determined to be invalid; alternatively, execution can continue when the control transfer target is determined to be valid.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 19, 2012
    Publication date: October 24, 2013
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Richard John Black, Timothy William Burrell, Miguel Oom Temudo de Castro, Manuel Silverio da Silva Costa, Kenneth Johnson, Matthew Ryan Miller
  • Publication number: 20110191848
    Abstract: A method disclosed herein includes acts of receiving code at a Just-in-Time compiler executing in an application on a computing device and compiling the code to generate machine code and causing the machine code to be placed on at least one page that is accessible by at least one processor on the computing device, wherein the Just-in-Time compiler compiles the code utilizing at least one technique for preventing a Just-in-Time spraying attack.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 3, 2010
    Publication date: August 4, 2011
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Benjamin Goth Zorn, Benjamin Livshits, Reid Borsuk, John Joseph Lambert, Matthew Ryan Miller, Louis Lafreniere, Peter Stuart Beck, Joshua Theodore Goodman, Timothy William Burrell, Steven Edward Lucco