Patent ID: 7716729

Claim:
A method for protecting against a denial of service attack at a higher layer of a communication network protocol stack, the method comprising: at the higher layer of the communication network protocol stack, wherein the higher layer is positioned above a session layer: receiving a plurality of packets containing packet information of the higher layer and racket information of a lower layer in the communication network protocol stack, wherein the lower layer is below the session layer; identifying, based on the packet information of the higher layer, a likely denial of service attack, wherein the denial of service attack is difficult to detect at the lower layer because source IP addresses of attack rackets vary during the denial of service attack; and in response to identifying a likely denial of service attack based on the packet information of the higher layer, dynamically mapping the packet information of the higher layer to packet information of the lower layer and populating the mapped packet information of the lower layer to a packet filter inspection layer positioned between the higher layer and the lower layer, wherein the racket filter inspection layer is positioned below an application layer and the session layer and positioned above a network layer and a transport layer; and at the packet filter inspection layer: receiving the dynamically mapped packet information of the lower layer; and selectively processing the packet using the packet information of the lower layer before the packet is received, from the lower layer, by a boundary of the session layer closest to the lower layer.