Abstract:
When a computer system process is acting contrary to the rules established for that process for the resource it is running on, the process is moved to a quarantined section and its continued operation is isolated from other processes. While in isolation, the quarantined process is tested and appropriate action, such as, for example, rehabilitation, change of the rules, or termination, is performed. The divided quarantined sections are used for each misbehaving process.

Description:
FIELD OF INVENTION  
       [0001]     This invention relates to computer system process control and more particularly to systems and methods for isolation of misbehaving processes.  
       DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART  
       [0002]     Computer application processes sometimes misbehave. This can be manifested in sudden abnormal consumption of resources or unexpected access or modification to resources or files that exceed normal parameters. A misbehaving application process running on a computer system can negatively impact the normal running of other applications running on the system. Typically, this is handled by automatically shutting down any process that is determined to be misbehaving followed by manual analysis and remediation of the possibly attacked/compromised system.  
         [0003]     Such an approach has the disadvantage of possibly disrupting the system when the process is, in fact, running correctly. A further disadvantage of turning the process off is that it then becomes more difficult to diagnose why the process was misbehaving.  
         [0004]     An alternative to automatic shutdown of the process is a manual shutdown. This generally takes much longer to accomplish thus, leaving the system vulnerable for a period of time.  
       BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0005]     When a computer system process is acting contrary to the rules established for that process (for the resource it is running on) the process is moved into quarantine and allowed to continue functioning isolated from other processes. While in isolation, the quarantined process is tested and appropriate action, such as, for example, rehabilitation, change of the rules, or termination, is performed. In this context, rehabilitation can take many forms, such as reconfiguring a process that is misbehaving to stop it&#39;s misbehavior in the future, assuming misbehavior was accidental; or replacing a compromised copy of the application with an uncompromised copy (e.g., replace a virus-infected version with an uninfected version). Different quarantine zones are used for each misbehaving process in order to avoid contamination between misbehaving processes. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0006]     For a more complete understanding of the present invention, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:  
         [0007]      FIG. 1  shows one embodiment of a process for controlling quarantine zones for misbehaving processes; and  
         [0008]      FIGS. 2 and 3  show embodiments of quarantined zones. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION  
       [0009]      FIG. 1  illustrates one embodiment  10  of a method for identifying and quarantining an application process which is violating rules of the system. In the embodiment, one quarantine  201  ( FIG. 2 ) is always pre-created while the other processes, such as processes  1 - 4  and resources, such as resources  1 - 8 , run in partition  200 .  
         [0010]     As shown in  FIG. 2  no resources have been assigned to quarantine  201  at this point so as to not impact partition  200  more than is necessary. Pre-creating an unused and minimal resource consuming quarantine maximizes quarantining performance once a problem is detected without taking undue resource load from the system for unused quarantines. The creation of a separate quarantine using a single CPU, system or machine can be by creating different instances of an operating system (OS) and/or creating containers or partitions using a single instance of an OS.  
         [0011]     The article, “Process Migration,” by Dejan S. Miloji{hacek over (c)}ić, Fred Douglis, Yves Paindaveine, Richard Wheeler and Songnian Zhou, published in ACM Computing Surveys, Column 32, No. 3, September 2000, pages 241-299 (ISSN 0360-0300), which is hereby incorporated by reference herein, discusses the migration of processes between machines for various purposes, such as, for example, dynamic load distribution, by migrating processes from overloaded nodes to less loaded ones; fault resilience, by migrating processes from nodes that may have experienced a partial failure; improved system administration, by migrating processes from the nodes that are about to be shut down or otherwise made unavailable, and data access locality, by migrating processes closer to the source of some data.  
         [0012]     Returning to  FIG. 1 , block  102  sets the rule review to the first process in the process table as maintained, for example, by block  120 . Block  103  sets the rule, as maintained, for example, by block  121 , to monitor the first resource using the latest version of the rules. Block  104  determines if the process violates the rule being checked. If not, then block  108  determines if it is the end of the rule list. If it is not, the next rule is set, via block  110 , and the system continues to iterate via blocks  104 ,  108 , and  110  until all of the rules have been checked for the first application process.  
         [0013]     When that occurs, block  109  determines whether it is the end of the process list. If it is not, then block  111  sets the next process and blocks  103 ,  104 ,  108 ,  109  again reiterate until all of the rules for all of the processes have been checked. Block  109  then redirects the system to repeat via block  102 .  
         [0014]     If at any time block  104  determines a process (for example, process  3 ) is violating a rule, then misbehaving (or potentially misbehaving) process  3  is moved to a dedicated partition, such as partition  201  ( FIG. 3 ). Any migration system or method can be used for such a purpose and such migration techniques are well know to most skilled in the art. Misbehaving processes (or fault conditions) can be intentional or unintentional and can be caused by many factors, including viruses, worms, etc., all of which cause the process to act improperly as defined by the rules.  
         [0015]     At this time, if the process (for example process  3 ) is using a resource, then that resource is migrated to partition  201 . This then allows process  3  to continue to be active so that remedial action can be taken after observation of the process. This can be done manually by an administrator or automatically under administrative control. At the same time, block  106  notifies the administrator to take appropriate action.  
         [0016]     Note that while the quarantine in the embodiment is shown in a partition, in reality the quarantine need only be security and resource isolated from the main system and a partition in the sense that HP, IBM, and others use that term is only a subset of the possible implementations. For example, a quarantine could be implemented within a virtual machine running on the main operating system.  
         [0017]     When the administrator is notified of a quarantined process the administrator (either manually or automatically) examines the quarantined process using security tools (such as integrity checkers, intrusion detection, etc.) as well as conventional system administrator tools to decide what to do with the suspect process. The administrator can then either adjust the resource rules so the quarantined process will not trigger even if it is returned to the normal pool, or the administrator can perform forensics and shut down the process or the administrator can take any number of actions. Remedial actions that could be taken include: disinfecting said process, such as via antivirus software or by reinstalling and migrating active data to the disinfected process; declaring the entire computer system compromised and initiating disaster recovery disinfection procedures (such as clearing off the computer and replacing it with an uncontaminated backup, possibly restored from backup media); and allowing the process to run in the quarantine with limited or non-existent external access while forensics are performed on the process to determine the nature of the infection (diagnostics and virus isolation). The administrator has numerous choices and the ones described here are merely some of the options available. The system will update the rules without restarting the system and if appropriate, the misbehaving process can be returned to the main partition if the administrator so chooses.  
         [0018]     Block  107  creates a replacement quarantine, such as quarantine  301 ,  FIG. 3 , in preparation for the next detected misbehaving (or potentially misbehaving) process. The reason for keeping different quarantines is so that a process can be isolated without fear of that process infecting (or being infected by) another process. Thus, each quarantined process is put in a separate quarantine to prevent cross-contamination in case one process is really misbehaving and the second was misdiagnosed by the rules. If each quarantined process is put in the same quarantine and any process is found to be compromised, none can be trusted, since they may all have been infected. Using a single quarantine reduces the quarantine overhead, but ultimately provides less protection. However, the system could work with only one quarantine if desired.  
         [0019]     Note that in embodiment  10  ( FIG. 1 ) all resource rules are checked against each process, rather than all processes being checked against a single rule (the rules are the inside loop and the process the outside loop). This is a design choice, but was used because such a procedure most naturally fits into how process scheduler&#39;s examine processes and only requires the addition of a few extra procedures in a process scheduler&#39;s responsibilities it should be understood that variations of the ordering of steps and nesting of loops are part of the same inventive concept.