Patent ID: 7747774

Claim:
A method for obscuring real traffic in a distributed network, comprising: generating obscuring traffic associated with ones of a plurality of components coupled to the distributed network; transmitting the generated obscuring traffic to the ones of the plurality of components so as to obscure the real traffic from intruders of the distributed network; and maintaining knowledge of the obscuring traffic so as to allow differentiation between the generated obscuring traffic and the real traffic in the distributed network, wherein maintaining knowledge comprises transmitting update messages to the ones of the plurality of components so as to allow the components to distinguish between the generated obscuring traffic and the real traffic; wherein generating the obscuring traffic comprises generating a list of messages to be included in dummy packets; wherein transmitting the generated obscuring traffic comprises transmitting dummy packets including messages from the list; and wherein the update messages includes a message identifier referring to a message in the list of messages, a source identifier, a destination identifier and a transmit time for the associated dummy packet.