PREVENTING ATTACKS ON DEVICES WITH MULTIPLE CPUs
AssigneeMcAfee, Inc.
InventorIgor Muttik
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed are systems and methods to utilize two different processing units (e.g., CPUs) to monitor each other. The processing units may have limited visibility and/or read only access to each other to reduce the possibility that one affected processing unit could compromise the second processing unit. Devices containing multiple processing units of different architectures could be configured so that one type of processing unit monitors another type of processing unit. When the processing units are different architectures a single piece of malicious software (malware) is unlikely to affect both processing units. Each processing unit can be configured to detect rootkits and other types of malware on the other processor(s) of the system/device.
Claims21
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions stored thereon to cause one or more processing units to:
- interrogate, by a first processing unit, information associated with a second processing unit;
- and
- analyze, by the first processing unit, the information to determine if an operating condition associated with the second processing unit indicates a potential abnormality, the potential abnormality comprising malicious code, the malicious code operable to attempt concealment from instructions executed by the second processing unit.
A mobile device comprising:
- a first processing unit;
- and
- a second processing unit, configured to monitor an operating environment associated with the first processing unit;
- wherein, the second processing unit is configured to:
- interrogate information associated with the first processing unit;
- and
- analyze the information to determine if an operating condition of the operating environment associated with the first processing unit indicates a potential abnormality, the potential abnormality comprising malicious code, the malicious code operable to attempt concealment from the operating environment associated with the first processing unit.
A method of updating a mobile device, the mobile device comprising a first processing unit and a second processing unit, wherein the first processing unit is configured to monitor the second processing unit, the method comprising:
- establishing a connection between a mobile device and an update server;
- retrieving, from the update server, code or monitoring information to be utilized by a first processing unit to monitor a second processing unit, wherein the first and second processing units are included in the mobile device;
- and
- performing an update process to store the code or monitoring information to an area of memory accessible to the first processing unit,
- wherein the code or information to be utilized by the first processing unit to monitor the second processing unit comprises code or monitoring information to determine if an operating condition of the environment associated with the second processing unit indicates a potential abnormality, the potential abnormality comprising malicious code, the malicious code operable to attempt concealment from the operating system associated with the second processing unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.