Patent Abstract:
A computer method and a system for detecting the file type of an electronic file, the method including the steps of: (a) using a predetermined number of bytes at the beginning of the file to create a list of probable file types; (b) testing the file against a detection rule for each file type in the list until a match is found; if no match is found (c) testing the file against other known detection rules for file types to find a match.

Full Description:
BACKGROUND 
     The present invention relates to a system and a method for detecting the file type of electronic files particularly in monitoring computer networks. 
     Network monitoring can be used for many purposes, including analysing network problems, detecting network intrusion attempts, gaining information for effecting a network intrusion, monitoring network usage, gathering and reporting network statistics, filtering suspect content from network traffic, reverse-engineering protocols used over a network, and debugging client/server communications. 
     Known network monitoring systems include packet “sniffers” (also known as network or protocol analyzers or Ethernet sniffers) which can intercept and log data packets passing over a digital network or part of a network, and can be set to capture or copy packets that are intended for a single machine on a network or, if set to “promiscuous mode”, a packet sniffer is also capable of capturing or copying all data packets traversing a network regardless of their intended destination. 
     A problem facing known network monitoring systems is that the volume of network traffic in local and wide area networks is increasing at a dramatic rate, due to increased sizes of networks combined with the requirement for networks to perform increasingly varied tasks, and increases in available bandwidth and speed of the networks. Hence known systems cannot process data packets at the rate at which they are transmitted and tend to store raw data as it passes the packet sniffer. The data is then processed at the best possible rate, and periods of low network use, such as at night, can be used to “catch up” with the data processing. 
     There are several disadvantages of processing the data at a slower speed than data is received. For example it is necessary to provide large data storage capacity for the raw data, it is not possible to catch up if the network is used at a high rate continuously, and also it is not possible to run any real-time dependent monitoring tasks. 
     SUMMARY 
     The present invention seeks to provide a method and a system for efficient and effective automatic detection of the file type of an electronic file. 
     Preferably the system performs in real time and handles data packets sequentially one at a time. 
     The system of the invention is faster than known systems. 
     According to one aspect of the invention there is provided a method for detecting the file type of an electronic file, the method comprising the steps of: (a) using a predetermined number of bytes at the beginning of the file to create a list of probable file types; (b) testing the file against a detection rule for each file type in the list until a match is found; if no match is found (c) testing the file against other known detection rules that aren&#39;t in the type-trie for file types to find a match. 
     Preferably a type-time data structure is used wherein each node has an extra child for a wild-card character and each node contains a pointer to its parent node. 
     Advantageously when matching data against a type-trie each node may offer two different paths to follow, one for the normal child node and one for the wild-card child, and the normal child is always visited in preference to the wild-card child. 
     If while performing the match a mismatch occurs then the parent node pointers are preferably followed until a parent node is found that has a wild-card child. The wild-card child is then visited and the process is repeated until a match occurs or there are no more parent nodes with wild-card children. 
     Because not every data type can be uniquely identified by the first few bytes of data, further detection rules may be required to pinpoint the correct data type. 
     If none of the possible data types in the list are correct, then a check may be made to see if there are any untried detection rules for data types not listed in the data type list. If other detection rules are available then the data is preferably tested against each rule in turn, checking for matches after each test. 
     If, after every available detection rule has been tried, no match has been found, then the file type is preferably set to “unknown”. It is possible to check for a file extension in the data but if a detectable type of file extension is found in the data at this stage then since it cannot be the declared type, the file type is marked “unknown”. If a non-detectable file type is revealed by the extension then the file type for the data is preferably set to that type. If no file extension can be located in the data, then the file type is in any case set to “unknown”. 
     The detection rules are preferably compiled into an intermediate state that can be quickly interpreted to test them against incoming data. 
     Other aspects of the invention include corresponding apparatus, computer programs and computer program media. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The present invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating a data traffic monitoring system which can be used in the file type detection method of the present invention; 
         FIG. 2  is a schematic illustration of the structure of a typical data packet in a local area network which can be monitored by the system of  FIG. 1 ; 
         FIG. 3  is a flow diagram illustrating the method of the invention for detecting the file type of an electronic file; 
         FIG. 4  illustrates a data structure showing one example of the method illustrated in  FIG. 3 . 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1  shows a monitoring system  10  for data traffic on a network  12 , and comprises a packet capture driver  14 , for capturing raw packet data from the network  12 , a control engine  18  arranged to receive raw data packets captured from the network  12 , a set of protocol and/or object modules  24 ;  26 ;  28 , which identity and analyse the content of the captured data packets, an application  30 , for processing the content from the data packets, and storage means  32  for storing the processed data. 
     The packet capture driver  14  comprises a packet buffer  16 . The control engine  18  comprises a packet buffer  20  and a stream list  22 . 
       FIG. 2  illustrates the structure of one example of an Ethernet data packet  34  which will be used in the following example to explain the operation of the monitoring system of  FIG. 1 . 
     The data packet  34  comprises an Ethernet Protocol layer  36 , an Internet Protocol (IP) layer  38 , a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer  40 , a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) layer  42 , and an application byte stream  44 . 
     The control engine  18  is installed on a host computer connected to one or more networks  12  to be monitored. When the control engine  18  is initialised it searches for protocol modules such as  24 ,  26 ,  28  within a specified directory of the host computer. The available protocol modules  24 ,  26 ,  28  then register with the control engine  18 , notifying the control engine  18  as to the type of data (protocol or object type) they are capable of (or are willing to try) dissecting/decoding and, as appropriate, the data transfer protocol or object type they are adapted to decode. For example, in the system of  FIG. 1  there is an Internet Protocol (IP) module  24 , a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) module  26 , and a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) module  28 . This notification of decodable protocols and/or objects for each module is interpreted by the control engine  18  as neither definitive nor exhaustive. The notification allows the control engine  18  to decide which modules should be given first chance to accept or reject the data. If the data is rejected by one protocol module then it is passed to each of the other available protocol modules in turn until either a module accepts the data, or there are no more modules available. The protocol modules  24 ,  26 ,  28  effectively register commands with the control engine  18  which act as filters allowing for the selection of specific data that can be easily and reliably identified by the module, for example by protocol numbers and/or the contents of packet headers. 
     The control engine  18  receives data packets from the packet capture driver  14  which provides an interface between the host operating system&#39;s network subsystem and the control engine  18 . The packet capture driver  14  includes means of identifying network adapters present on the host machine and means of retrieving details about the network adapters such as a name, hardware address, media type, and speed. The packet capture driver  14  also provides means for selecting which network adapter(s) should be used for capturing packets and means for modifying settings for individual network adapters, such as setting an adapter to promiscuous mode. 
     The packet buffer  16  of the packet capture driver  14  is used to store incoming data packets copied from the selected network data traffic. The packet buffer  16  stores all of the data packets until they have either been successfully decoded and retrieved by an application  30 , or the packet has been rejected by the system  10 . 
     Raw data packets in the packet buffer  16  are not moved or modified in any way during the decoding process, thereby minimising processing overheads associated with such tasks. During the decoding process pointers to the data packets in the packet buffer  16  are passed as function variables between the packet capture driver  14 , control engine  18 , decoding modules  24 ;  26 ;  28 , and the application  30 . 
     The decoding process begins when the control engine  18  receives a pointer from the packet capture driver  14  pointing to a data packet  34  in the packet buffer  16 . The control engine  18  examines the raw data packet  34  to determine the protocol of the lowest protocol layer in the packet  34  (the lowest layer in the protocol stack). The control engine  18  is programmed to understand the most common, ie lowest layer, transfer protocols. In the example shown in  FIG. 2  the lowest protocol layer in the data packet  34  is the Ethernet Protocol (EP) layer  36 . 
     Once the control engine  18  has determined the lowest protocol layer it then decodes that lowest layer to determine where the next protocol layer (in this example the IP layer  38 ) in the data packet  34  begins. The control engine  18  then creates a pointer to the start of this next layer  38 . This decoding process does not physically modify the raw data packet  34  stored in the packet buffer  16 . 
     The control engine  18  extracts the protocol identifier from the next layer  38  of the data packet  34  then, using the module registration data, determines which one, if any, of the available modules has notified the control engine  18  that it wants first chance to accept or reject data packets containing this identified protocol. In this example, the next lowest protocol layer is the Internet Protocol (IP) layer  38 , and therefore the control engine  18  will select the IP module  24 . 
     Once the IP module  24  has been determined as the next one to try, the control engine  18  sends a pointer to the selected protocol module  24  indicating the location of the raw data packet  34  in the packet buffer  16  and also an offset to enable the IP module  24  to locate the valid data for the second layer  38  within the packet  34 . The IP module  24  will then examine the second protocol layer  38  within the data packet  34  and determine whether or not it can decode the protocol. If the second protocol layer  38  is successfully recognised by the IP protocol module  24 , it will decode the second protocol layer  38  and determine where the valid data for the third protocol layer  40  in the data packet  34  begins and returns a pointer to the control engine  18 . The pointer identifies the data packet  34  along with the offset of valid data for the third layer  40 . The control engine  18  will then look at the third protocol layer  40  to determine a probable protocol type for the third layer  40 . 
     The control engine  18  then uses the probable layer type to determine which module, if any, has indicated that it wants the first chance to accept or reject the data. In the illustrated example of a data structure given in  FIG. 4 , the next protocol layer is the TCP layer  40  which the TCP module  26  would have registered with the control engine  18  to receive first. 
     This process is repeated until either there are no more modules to decode the protocol layers in the data packet, or until there are no more layers, e.g. the application byte stream  44  in the data packet  34  is identified as part of a stream. 
     An aim of the decoding process described above is to be able to reconstruct the original data sent over the network. To achieve this aim it is desirable to decode a protocol layer that enables associated data packets to be grouped together and reconstructed into the original stream. The network monitoring system  10  may include one or more modules capable of identifying streamed data, for example the TCP module  26 , and/or one or more modules arranged to reconstruct stream data, for example the HTTP module  28 . 
     When a protocol module such as the TCP module  26  looks at the first data packet  34  of a stream of data from the control engine  18 , the TCP module  26  will examine the data and decide if it recognises it. If the TCP module  26  successfully recognises and decodes the TCP layer  40  and finds the start of a stream, the TCP module  26  notifies the control engine  18  that the start of a stream has been detected. The control engine  18  then creates a pointer list  22  in memory, which is used to store pointers to packets identified as part of the stream while protocol type detection is taking place. The pointer list  22  enables the system  10  to continue sending one pointer between modules and the control engine  18  in later decoding stages. 
     The control engine  18  also creates two arrays, one for each direction (upload and download) that are used to concatenate the data from multiple packets. The data in these arrays is then passed to the modules while they are performing protocol detection so that the modules do not need to handle data that is spread across multiple packets. The two arrays and the packet pointer lists are stored only while protocol type detection is taking place and as soon as a module has accepted the stream, the control engine  18  passes all the packets in the pointer list to the module and the pointer list and arrays are destroyed. 
     The TCP module  26  then sends a pointer to the data packet  34  back to the control engine  18 , along with the offset of valid data for the fourth layer  42  and an indication of the probable type of data in the fourth layer  42 , which in the example data packet  34  is an HTTP stream layer. In addition, the module  26  sends the stream pointer to identify which stream the data packet is associated with, and also the direction the data is travelling. 
     When the control engine  18  receives the first packet of a stream (for example, when a TCP module  26  detects a stream and notifies the control engine  18 ), it looks up any modules registered for the data type supplied by the TCP module  26  and then it passes the data in the packet to the identified module, i.e. the HTTP module  28 . The HTTP module  28  will then examine the data and decide whether or not it recognises it. The HTTP module  28  then notifies the control module  18  that either:
         a) The module is not yet able to make a conclusive decision as to the type of data in the stream, but the module wishes to continue to receive the data for this stream until it can make a decision.   b) The module has identified the data and wishes to receive all other packets on this stream.   c) The module has identified the data, and the module can decode the data, but the module does not want to receive any other packets on this stream.   d) The module has decided that the data is not for it and it does not want to receive any other packets on this stream. This instructs the control engine  18  to allow other modules to detect the type of data in the packet(s).       

     For each stream, the control engine  18  maintains a separate stream list  22  for each direction (upload and download) and a pointer list containing pointers to each packet received so far. During the stream identification process, the control engine  18  will concatenate each new packet&#39;s data onto the appropriate stream list  22 , thereby enabling each module access to the entire stream data received so far in a continuous array. If a module decides that, after inspecting several packets of a stream, it does not want to/cannot decode the stream, the control engine  18  can use the arrays and pointer list  22  to “replay” the packets containing the stream to other modules in the order that they were received so that other modules can inspect the packets. However once a module has accepted the stream, the packet pointers are removed from the list and the list and arrays are destroyed. 
     The stream pointer can be thought of as a number simply identifying which stream a packet belongs to. However a small amount of memory in the stream is also reserved to allow modules to store state information. For example a module can store information about what it is doing in the stream to aid it in handling the next packet. 
     There are certain situations where it is not possible to detect the type of data in a stream, for example where a connection simply transfers raw file data with no protocol headers or other identifying information (once a connection has been established). To allow for this, when a module registers for a stream-type data with the control engine  18  it can be set so that the module automatically accepts all streams matching a specified type (i.e. no detection of the type by the module). 
     Once a module, such as an HTTP module  28 , positively identifies the data and informs the control engine  18  that it wishes to receive more packets in this stream, all packets received so far will be “‘replayed” to the module in the order that they were originally received. The module receives a pointer to a packet and to a stream, both of which contain pointers to the previous layer (if any). The module is then able to walk back to all the previous packet layers and stream layers. Both the packets and streams can have properties attached to them. The pointers to previous layers can be used to query properties that other modules may have attached on the lower layers. 
     A function variable sent between the modules and the control engine  18  can be used to identify the first and last packets in a stream. It is important to identify when the end of the stream is reached so that the module can free any memory it has assigned to unneeded pointers. 
     After the data for each packet is received by a module, the module must notify the control engine  18  whether or not it wishes to continue to receive data from the stream. If a module notifies the control engine  18  that it no longer wishes data from the stream, the module decoding the next layer down will be notified by the control engine  18  and the module can choose to stop processing the lower layer. This can propagate all the way down the protocol stack, thereby saving processing time for data that will never be used. 
     One or more applications  30  can be included in the system  10 . An application  30  is seen by the control engine  18  as simply another module and it must register with the control engine  18  in the same way. The difference between modules and applications is that the applications accept fully decoded objects, and are used to process the reconstructed data and/or store the data, in real-time, onto a data storage means  32  for later viewing. 
     In addition to identifying and extracting data within packets and streams, modules can also provide parameters to the control engine to be associated with a packet or stream and these are stored in memory in the control engine  18 . For example, an IP module  24  can add the source and destination IP addresses to packets (which is read from the IP header) which can then be read by the TCP module  26 , which requires the source and destination IP addresses as well as the TCP ports to associate packets into connections. By using these properties it is not necessary for the TCP module  26  to be able to understand an IP header. 
     If, at any stage in the decoding process, none of the protocol modules is registered for the identified protocol, or the registered protocol module rejects the data packet, the control engine  18  will systematically send pointers to the data packet  34  and location of the start of the next layer within the packet, to each of protocol modules in turn until either a module accepts the data, or until there are no more protocol modules to try. In one embodiment of the invention, the control engine  18  “learns” which modules accept the unclaimed protocols so that other data packets containing the same protocol are offered to the accepting module first. 
     In certain situations the data contained in a data packet may be compressed. When compressed data packets arrive at the control engine  18  they must be uncompressed before the decoding process can continue. For this purpose, certain modules are included in the system  10  which are arranged to decompress the compressed data packets. In order to enable later modules to read the decompressed data packets, it is necessary for the decompression modules to store the decompressed packets in a second packet buffer  20  within the control engine  18 . From the decompression point onwards in the decoding process, the pointers to the data packet are directed to the decompressed packet stored in the second packet buffer  20  rather than the original packet buffer  16  located in the packet capture driver  14 . 
     The above-mentioned type detection mechanism is only used for protocol streams (eg. HTTP streams, TCP streams) and not for object streams (eg. *.ZIP files, *.EXE files). 
     The control engine  18  uses its own protocol on object identifiers (ID&#39;s), in the form of 32 bit integers. The address space is divided in two, with one half used for protocol types such as IP, TCP, HTTP, etc. and the other half is used for object types such as HTML documents, images, text files, etc. The control engine  18  can distinguish between protocols and objects by checking whether the high bit (bit  31 ) is set or not. For protocol types the high bit is not set and for object types it is set. The control engine provides a set of macros for converting protocol numbers into control engine type ID&#39;s as well as maintaining a database of mime type and file extensions. Modules such as an HTTP module  28  which receive a mime type for each object transferred via the protocol can request that the control engine  18  converts the mime type to a control engine type ID. Similarly, modules such as an FTP module can request the conversion of file extensions for the objects they capture. 
     The control engine  18  can be arranged to perform automatic type detection of objects such as images and text documents by examining the captured and reformed data. By detecting the data type rather than relying on the file extension of the reformed object the system  10  can provide enhanced monitoring features, including being able to correctly identify objects that have been deliberately mislabelled in an attempt to hide their content. 
       FIG. 3  illustrates a system for automatic detection of the file type of a reconstructed file and shows a four stage detection process in the examination of captured data to determine its true data type. 
     At the first stage  50  of the detection process, the captured data  52  is passed through a type-trie data structure  54  to match the incoming data against all known data types in near constant time. This first stage  50  uses the fact that a large proportion of data types have a defined structure, and in particular many of these data types have a defined first N bytes of data at the start of each file which can be used as a file-type identifier. This section can be used to quickly create a list of one or more data types of which start with the same first N bytes as that of the captured data. 
       FIG. 4  is a diagram showing an exemplary type-trie which can be used to identify the following types of data: 
     
       
         
               
               
               
             
           
               
                   
                   
               
               
                   
                 Initial Bytes 
                 File Types(s) 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
             
               
                   
                 &lt;HTML&gt; 
                 .HTML 
               
               
                   
                 &lt;XML\x20 
                 .XML 
               
               
                   
                 GIF8 
                 .GIF 
               
               
                   
                 PE\x00\x00 
                 .EXE, .DLL 
               
               
                   
                 PK\x03\x04 
                 .ZIP 
               
               
                   
                 RIFF\?\?\?\?AVI\x20 
                 .AVI 
               
               
                   
                 RIFF\?\?\?\?WAVE 
                 .WAV 
               
               
                   
                 Rar! 
                 .RAR 
               
               
                   
                 \x89PNG 
                 .PNG 
               
               
                   
                   
               
             
          
         
       
     
     The type-trie data structure is similar to a patricia trie, with added support for wild-card characters. In a patricia trie, each node may have as many child nodes as there are characters in the alphabet (256 for an alphabet including all possible byte values). In a type-trie there may be one extra child for the wild-card character and each node contains a pointer to its parent node. 
     When matching data against a type-trie each node may offer two different paths to follow, one for the normal child node and one for the wild-card child. In this case the normal child is always visited in preference to the wild-card child. 
     If while performing the match a mismatch occurs then the parent node pointers are followed until a parent node is found that has a wild-card child. The wild-card child is then visited and the process is repeated until a match occurs or there are no more parent nodes with wild-card children. 
     Because not every data type can be uniquely identified by the first few bytes of data, further detection rules may be required to pinpoint the correct data type. The list of possible matching data types from the first stage  50  is inspected  58  in the second stage  56 . If the data type list contains at least one data type, the control engine checks if the first data type has a detection rule  60 . These detection rules can be more complex than simply looking at the first few bytes of the data as with the type-trie, for example the rule may check for components deeper within the data, or examine the structure of the data. If a detection rule is available for the listed possible data type, then the data is tested against the rule  62 , and the control engine checks if there is a match  64 . If the data does match the data type, the data type is set as the detected type  84  and the detection process is complete  86 . If, on the other hand, the data does not match the tested data type, then the control engine checks if there are any more possible data types in the list  66 , and if so goes back to the step of checking whether the data type has a detection rule  60 . This process is repeated until either the data type is matched, or there are no more data types in the list to test. 
     If none of the possible data types in the list are correct, then, in the third stage  68  the control engine checks if there are any untried detection rules for data types not listed in the data type list  70 . If other detection rules are available then the data is tested  72  against each rule in turn, checking for matches  74  after each test. 
     If, after every available detection rule has been tried, no match has been found, then the file type is set to “unknown” at  82  and the detection process is complete at  86 . It is possible to check for a file extension in the data  78 , in stage four at  76  but if a recognizable type of file extension is found in the data at this stage then it cannot be the declared type and so the file type is marked “unknown”. If an unrecognizable file type is revealed by the extension then the file type for the data is set to that type at  80  and the detection process is complete at  86 . If no file extension can be located in the data, then the file type is in any case set to “unknown” at  82  and the detection process is complete  86 . 
     The composition of the detection rules depends of course upon the nature of the data. They will preferably be defined using a special purpose language and one example for matching Microsoft Word documents might be:
 
[({48:4}*(1&lt;&lt;{30:2}))+(2*128)]=“Word Document”
 
     This rule reads the 2 byte sector size from offset  30  and shifts  1  by that value (i.e. it calculates 2 to the power of the sector size). It then reads the 4 byte directory sector number from offset  48 , multiplies the sector number by the sector size, adds two times the size of a directory entry, and compares the string at the resulting location with “Word Document”. 
     The detection rules are preferably compiled into an intermediate state that can be quickly interpreted to test them against incoming data.

Technology Classification (CPC): 7