US 7,480,931 B2Granted

Volume mount authentication

AssigneeBBS Technologies, Inc.

InventorJason Robert Weiss

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Abstract

There is a variety of media that may be inserted into a reading or writing device, such as CD's, USB drives, floppy disks, memory sticks, and many other devices. Media is inserted into a media reading or writing device that is in communication with a computer or network device. Upon insertion of the media, a number of metadata regarding that media is available to the computer. The trustworthy calculator is typically a plug-in software module that processes each piece of volume metadata and applies a weighed score, resulting in a Trustworthy Factor. A scoring matrix denotes ranges of values of the Trustworthy Factor into a Level of Trust Zone. Based on the Level of Trust Zone, appropriate action handlers may direct the computer to disallow the mounting of the media, may require specific authentication action to take place prior to allowing a mount of the media, or may indicate that the media may be mounted without further authentication. Upon completion of the execution of the action handlers, a decision to allow or disallow the mount is made.

A method for authenticating computer media for communication with a computing device, comprising the steps of:

a) detecting a media volume mount point;
b) deabstracting a logical address of said media volume mount point into a physical disk partition address;
c) deabstracting said physical disk partition address into a physical storage device address;
d) receiving a plurality of metadata elements from data structures associated with one or more components from the list comprising:
said computer media, said physical storage device address, said physical disk partition address, a data communications channel, and said media volume mount point;
e) loading a trustworthy factor calculator wherein said trustworthy factor calculator comprises calculation steps producing score values and maximum possible score values associated with said metadata elements;
f) initializing said trustworthy factor calculator with a matrix of weighing factors associated with said plurality of metadata elements;
g) accumulating a raw score based on said score values for said plurality of metadata elements, wherein each score value used in said accumulation of said raw score is adjusted by said associated weighing factors, accumulating an overall maximum possible score for said maximum possible score values, wherein each maximum possible score value used in said accumulation of said overall maximum score is adjusted by said associated weighing factors, normalizing said raw score with said overall maximum score, whereby a trustworthy factor score is produced;
h) initializing said trustworthy factor calculator with a scoring matrix having discrete level of trust zone values associated with trustworthy factor scores;
i) comparing said trustworthy factor score with said scoring matrix, whereby a level of trust zone value is produced;
j) executing at least one zone action handler based on said level of trust zone value, said zone action handler returning at least one zone action handler response;
and
k) determining whether said volume mount point authentication should be permitted or denied based on the result of said zone action handlers response.

10 more elements

Abstract

Claims37