Patent ID: 7730302

Claim:
In a distributed computing system that allows a client access to computing resources of a remote server, a method of protecting against malicious or unintentional change of secure settings by verifying integrity of a secure portion of a configuration file used for determining settings for connectivity with the remote server, the method comprising: a client receiving a configuration file from a publishing source, the configuration file including a plurality of settings that define options to be used during a remote session between the client and a remote server; the client identifying, from the plurality of settings, a subset of the plurality of settings as unchangeable secure settings, wherein the plurality of settings also include configurable settings that the client can set as desired without compromising an integrity of the unchangeable secure settings; the client determining if the unchangeable secure settings have changed in order to verify the integrity of the configuration file, such that if any of the unchangeable secure settings has been altered the configuration file is invalidated for preventing the client from access to the one or more computing resources of the remote server; and if it is determined that the unchangeable secure settings have not changed, such that the integrity of the configuration file is verified, the client sending the configuration file to the remote server as part of a remote session connection sequence for connecting the client to the remote server, and wherein the remote server also determines if any of the unchangeable secure settings have changed in order to verify the integrity of the configuration file and prior to connecting the client to the remote server in the remote session.