Patent ID: 9660958
Date: 2017-05-23
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04N

Claim:
1. A method comprising: capturing network traffic by a firewall device associated with a private network, wherein the network traffic is directed to an intended recipient associated with the private network; extracting, by the firewall device, a media file from the network traffic; determining, by the firewall device, presence of a potentially malicious hidden data item embedded in the media file, wherein the potentially malicious hidden data item comprises encoded data within one or more of a digital watermark, steganography and a barcode; determining whether the potentially malicious hidden data item violates a security policy of a plurality of security policies of the private network enforced by the firewall device by decoding the encoded data and applying a content filter to a result of the decoding, wherein the content filter comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filter and wherein the security policy contains information indicative of a URL known to be associated with malicious activities; and when said determining whether the potentially malicious hidden data item violates a security policy is affirmative, then performing by the firewall device (i) blocking transmission of the media file to the intended recipient, (ii) causing the intended recipient to be alerted regarding the violated security policy and (iii) causing a network administrator of the private network to be alerted regarding the violated security policy.