Symantec Patent Grants

Using disposable profiles for privacy in internet sessions

Granted: March 24, 2020
Patent Number: 10601864
A method for applying user profiles in electronic sessions is described. In one embodiment, the method includes detecting a request to initiate an electronic session with a web server; identifying a user profile associated with the request; generating an alternative profile; initiating the electronic session; and replacing the user profile with the alternative profile during the electronic session. In some examples, the method includes performing a security action, including modifying…

Creating dynamic meta-communities

Granted: March 24, 2020
Patent Number: 10600130
A user creates dynamic meta-communities that span membership of multiple existing third-party online communities, based on profile attributes. This allows the user to create targeted sub-communities for specific purposes without recreating or duplicating community information. The user can communicate with members of created meta-communities by leveraging the mechanisms provided by the third party online communities.

Securing a network device by automatically identifying files belonging to an application

Granted: March 3, 2020
Patent Number: 10579794
Securing a network device by automatically identifying files belonging to an application. In one embodiment, a method may include collecting file attributes for multiple files from multiple network devices, examining a hash of file contents of each of the multiple files to identify multiple unique files in the multiple files, summarizing the file attributes for each of the multiple unique files to generate a sketch of file attributes for each of the multiple unique files, clustering the…

Systems and methods for managing computer security of client computing machines

Granted: February 25, 2020
Patent Number: 10574700
A computer-implemented method for managing computer security of client computing machines may include (i) monitoring a set of client computing devices, (ii) receiving security data on sets of security-related events from each client computing device in the set of client computing devices, (iii) clustering the sets of security-related events by calculating a dissimilarity value, for each set of security-related events, that indicates a uniqueness of the set of security-related events in…

Location validation through physical surroundings

Granted: February 25, 2020
Patent Number: 10573020
A method for location validation through physical surroundings is described. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a location of a user device, transmitting to the user device, a request for additional information, receiving the additional information from the user device in response to the request, the second identifier matching the first identifier, comparing the received additional information with stored data pre-associated with the received location, and verifying the…

Systems and methods for identifying malicious file droppers

Granted: February 25, 2020
Patent Number: 10572663
The disclosed computer-implemented method for identifying malicious file droppers may include (1) detecting a malicious file on the computing device, (2) constructing an ordered list of files that resulted in the malicious file being on the computing device where the malicious file is the last file in the ordered list of files and each file in the ordered list of files placed the next file in the ordered list of files on the computing device, (3) determining that at least one file prior…

Systems and methods for connecting internet-connected devices to wireless access points

Granted: February 18, 2020
Patent Number: 10567962
The disclosed computer-implemented method for connecting Internet-connected devices to wireless access points may include (1) receiving, over the Internet from a client device at a server, a request to connect the client device to an access point that is secured by a passcode, (2) transmitting a verification-request message from the server to the access point and/or the client device that instructs the access point and/or the client device to perform an action that enables the physical…

Systems and methods for managing computing device access to local area computer networks

Granted: February 18, 2020
Patent Number: 10567387
The disclosed computer-implemented method for managing computing device access to local area computer networks may include (i) receiving, at a router computing device, a request to connect a client computing device to a local area computer network, (ii) determining whether the client computing device has prior authorization to connect to the local area computer network, (iii) sending, when the client computing device is determined to not have prior authorization, a request to an…

One-touch secure on-boarding of OOB IoT devices

Granted: February 11, 2020
Patent Number: 10560448
The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for on-boarding an out of the box (OOB) device so as to secure electronic control of the OOB device. In some embodiments, a method may be performed by a computing device having an electronic processor, and may include automatically electronically receiving, by a processor, an electronic request to on-board from the OOB device, and authenticating, by the processor, a standardized certificate associated with the OOB device. The method…

Antenna system for wireless communication devices and other wireless applications

Granted: February 4, 2020
Patent Number: 10553930
An antenna system for wireless communications and other wireless applications is disclosed. In one particular embodiment, the antenna system may comprise a frame with at least three facets and an antenna element mounted on each of the at least three facets, wherein each of the antenna elements are electromagnetically isolated from each other.

Systems and methods for mapping services utilized by network domains

Granted: January 28, 2020
Patent Number: 10547633
The disclosed computer-implemented method for mapping services utilized by network domains may include (i) receiving a request to perform a risk assessment on a domain, (ii) querying a database for records associated with the domain, where each record links to a network resource that enables functionality of the domain, (iii) generating a service map that matches each network resource to a corresponding service type and service provider, (v) performing the risk assessment of the domain,…

Security network devices by forecasting future security incidents for a network based on past security incidents

Granted: January 28, 2020
Patent Number: 10547623
Securing network devices by forecasting future security incidents for a network based on past security incidents. In one embodiment, a method may include constructing past inside-in security features for a network, constructing past outside-in security features for the network, and employing dynamic time warping to generate a similarity score for each security feature pair in the past inside-in security features, in the past outside-in security features, and between the past inside-in…

Systems and methods for managing security programs

Granted: January 28, 2020
Patent Number: 10546117
The disclosed computer-implemented method for managing security programs may include (i) identifying a security program configured to analyze files on a client device to detect malicious files, (ii) determining a result the security program would report for an analysis of a file on the client device, (iii) intercepting an attempt by the security program to analyze the file, and (iv) determining, based on the result the security program would report for the analysis of the file, whether…

Providing adversarial perturbations to media

Granted: January 21, 2020
Patent Number: 10542034
A method for applying perturbations to electronic media is described. A computing device may receive an electronic request to upload an electronic media to an internet-based service and perform a pre-processing operation on the electronic media based on the electronic request and a feature of the electronic media. In some examples, the computing device may perform a security action on the electronic media. For example, the computing device may apply perturbations to elements of the…

Systems and methods for personalizing security incident reports

Granted: January 21, 2020
Patent Number: 10542017
The disclosed computer-implemented method for personalizing security incident reports may include (i) generating, within a training dataset, a feature vector for each of a group of security incidents, the feature vector including features that describe the security incidents and the features including response codes that a set of clients previously assigned to the security incidents as labels, (ii) training a supervised machine learning function on the training dataset using the response…

Protection against accessibility service abuse

Granted: January 14, 2020
Patent Number: 10534934
An accessibility service protection application for hiding content of a first application from an accessibility service of a second application on a mobile computing device is described. The accessibility service protection application determines the first application currently active in foreground of the mobile computing device. The accessibility service protection application configures a transparent activity to hide content associated with the first application from the accessibility…

Encrypting and decrypting sensitive files on a network device

Granted: January 14, 2020
Patent Number: 10534933
Encrypting and decrypting sensitive files on a network device. In one embodiment, a method may include determining that a file stored on a network device is a sensitive file, encrypting the sensitive file, sending, to an authentication server, an encryption key, initializing, at the network device, a Software Guard Extension (SGX) enclave, loading, into the SGX enclave, a retrieval application, receiving, at the retrieval application, an attestation from the authentication server that…

Systems and methods for detecting preparatory-stages of rowhammer attacks

Granted: January 7, 2020
Patent Number: 10528736
The disclosed computer-implemented method for detecting preparatory-stages of rowhammer attacks may include (i) receiving, at a computing device, signatures of preparatory behaviors that are known to be exhibited by malicious virtual machines during preparatory stages of rowhammer attacks, (ii) monitoring, at the computing device, behaviors of a virtual machine that is hosted by the computing device, (iii) detecting, at the computing device while monitoring behaviors of the virtual…

Systems and methods for remediating computer stability issues

Granted: January 7, 2020
Patent Number: 10530809
The disclosed computer-implemented method for remediating computer stability issues may include (i) determining that a device has experienced a computer stability problem, (ii) obtaining, from the device, one or more computer-generated log lines that potentially include information pertaining to a cause of the computer stability problem, (iii) directly analyzing text included within the computer-generated log lines, (iv) identifying information relating to the computer stability problem…

Systems and methods for detecting security incidents

Granted: January 7, 2020
Patent Number: 10530805
The disclosed computer-implemented method for detecting security incidents may include (i) collecting, by a security server, security information describing security events detected on at least one client device, (ii) generating, based on the collected security information, a mathematical graph that includes a set of nodes designating machine-windows of data and a set of nodes designating detected security events, (iii) executing a random-walk-with-restart algorithm on the generated…