Patent ID: 7624439

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for a process authentication entity to authenticate API requests made in a data processing system comprising an operating system and a system bus, the computer-implemented method comprising: monitoring the system bus for Application Programming Interface (API) requests made to the operating system by an application; retrieving, from the system bus, a selected one of the API requests made to the operating system by the application, the selected API request also being received by the operating system over the system bus; requesting that the operating system not respond to the selected API request also received by the operating system; responding to the application that made the selected API request to the operating system, in place of a response the application expects to receive from the operating system; authenticating the selected API request by referring to a permissions list; and sending the authenticated selected API request over the system bus to the operating system if the API request is authenticated, thereby: providing the selected API request to the operating system again, and allowing the operating system to process the authenticated selected API request, wherein the selected API request is allowed to time out if the selected API request is not authenticated.