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Patents Security Software

McAfee Granted Firewall Patent 310

Posted by timothy from the usual-absurdity dept.
BadUspto writes "BetaNews reports that 'The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted software maker McAfee a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. The patent filing involves tracing the location of an incoming connection and displaying a map showing where the remote system geographically resides.' Doomsday for VisualRoute and others?"
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McAfee Granted Firewall Patent More

McAfee Granted Firewall Patent

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  • Prior Art (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jonbrewer ( 11894 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:21AM (#11477618) Homepage

    See James Bond, Goldeneye [imdb.com]

  • prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:22AM (#11477621)
    Isn't it prior art if something is common knowledge?

    What of those of us that can, and have been, doing such IP -> rough geographical area translations in our mind for years?

    • Re:prior art? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The patent is doing the geographical area translation on incoming connections in the firewall software.

      Stupid patent? Yes. Prior art? It's specific enough that I doubt there is any. Anybody know of software that traces geographically incoming connections, 'cause I don't.

      • Re:prior art? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Oscaro ( 153645 )
        It's specific enough that I doubt there is any. Anybody know of software that traces geographically incoming connections, 'cause I don't.

        You mean like XTraceRoute [chalmers.se]?
        • software that traces geographically incoming connections

          Or, to put numbers on the features:
          1. traces
          2. geographically
          3. incoming connections

          XTraceRoute seems to accomplish 1 and 2. Since it doesn't do 3, it's not what the grandparent wants, right?

      • Re:prior art? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by SilverspurG ( 844751 )
        Prior art? It's specific enough that I doubt there is any. Anybody know of software that traces geographically incoming connections, 'cause I don't.

        Holy cats. What rock do you live under?

        Even as early as 1993 there was a graphical traceroute on the NeXT systems which attempted to put whois data together with traceroutes. I googled for a while but couldn't find it specifically.

        There is the GeoTrace project on sf.net. That's been there since at least 2001.

        Googling for "geographical traceroute" turns u
        • Try rereading the grandparents post. He appears to be aware of the geo traceroute tools, but he says this is something different. You blatantly missed his point.
      • The real question is why anyone would buy anything from McAfee in the first place.

        They may have been pretty good once, but they have fallen to being completely useless.

        I would just about run without virus protection than to use McAfee's anti-virus.

        I would pay for an anti-virus service from someone else's before I'd use McAfee's for free. In fact, I did just that a couple of years ago.
      • >Stupid patent? Yes. Prior art? It's specific
        >enough that I doubt there is any.

        As the original poster said, prior art is not the only requirement one look at. In addition to no prior art, a patent can't be something that is obvious to people in the field (call them experts or whatever), or trivial. In many of the cases of software patents I would say that even if there is no prior art (which seems to be what people focus on mostly here), it is really very obvious things even to someone NOT in the fie

        • In other words, the "method" is not much of an invention if just about any programmer (i.e. 'person skilled in the field') can come up with the method in a few minutes, which is CERTAINLY true in this case. Note I'm referring to the method, not the idea of doing it: you can't patent an "idea" (e.g. "show geographical location of incoming firewall connections"), you patent a method for implementing an idea. You can take any programmer off the street, tell him/her to "show geographical location of incoming fi

          • Re:prior art? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Pofy ( 471469 )
            Well, it might depend on country, here the text from the US patent law (Title 35, part II, chapter 10, 103, section (a)):

            (a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said su
      • About 15 years ago we had in our little LPmud an object called /lib/country, which had a method get_location() to map the IP of the players in the LPmud to their respective geographical method. At first we were using empirical data (just asking everyone where he is from or guessing from the IP name and then building an internal table), later one (around 1996) we had an external client which queried the whois database to find the netblock owner and display the location.

        If you entered "who" at any point in t
      • We're getting pretty close with Gtrace [caida.org], which apparently was shown at the Usenix Lisa '99 [usenix.org] conference, which would put it about 2-3 years ahead of the McAfee application. Now, granted: It's attached to traceroute (outbound), rather than firewall (inbound) connections. On the other hand, it's designed as a front end to traceroute, I'd say that it's a pretty obvious modification to attach it to a firewall output instead, and may even be mentioned in their paper [caida.org] (haven't had time to read it).

        This was found w

    • Re:prior art? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 )
      Yes this is terrible. However, McCrappy is really doing us a service, not that they know it. The more rediculous things whith are patented,the more obvious it becomes that the system is broken. IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago?
      • IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago?

        Yep, that's tr... correct. (Actually, I have no idea.)

      • Re:prior art? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Almost-Retired ( 637760 )
        McCrappy is really doing us a service, not that they know it. The more rediculous things whith are patented,the more obvious it becomes that the system is broken. IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago?

        Yes, but from the way the courts work, and the way the patent office handles things, it just goes into the in hopper and will be handled in the order its postmarked as (supposedly). There is little or no attention paid to the fact that the inbox needs to be another room built onto the agency, the

  • Yea! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Patents do an industry good! All hail our patent overlords!

  • Let the lawsuits fly (Score:5, Informative)

    by EnderWigginsXenocide ( 852478 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:24AM (#11477631) Homepage
    Article text: Although McAfee has not yet said whether it will pursue licensing agreements from other software vendors, the patent is likely to put pressure on rivals such as Symantec and Zone Labs. Most firewall applications provide traceroute capabilities, with some including visual maps to aid users. In 2001, the USPTO granted McAfee an unusually broad patent regarding automatic updating and self-installation of software. At the time, McAfee said anyone "willfully flaunting the technology" would face legal action. ME: Well, even though the text says McAfee hasn't decided on going after other companies with lawsuits..err licensing agreements... they do appear to have a track record of doing so.

  • Yes, doomsday for them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:27AM (#11477643) Journal
    See, this is what patents do. They give the holder of the patent the exclusive rights to licensing of that technology.

    I'm not saying it's right. I'm not going to go as far as to say that the whole system ought to be scrapped, either. There are good things and bad things about the current system, but unless we can come up with a better system that will help promote the advancement of arts and sciences without trampling on the rights of inventors and creators, this is the only system we've got.

    The best thing to do would be to take a hard look at the patent system and figure out how it can be rid of the badly-working parts and how to improve the parts that work well. Then perhaps we can have a fair and equitable system of patents.

    • Re:But it SUCKS. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:09AM (#11477824)

      Don't forget that software patents are very new- they've only been allowed since about 1996 or so. They don't promote innovation at all - they stifle it. They allow the one thing that's bad for consumers- limited choice and a greater potential for vendor lock-in. They make it difficult for competition, since "licensing fees" could easily result in a net loss for anyone attempting to offer products or services in the same market. Since this provides patent holders with a larger captive market (not by consumer choice, mind you), there is less incentive to invest in things that matter- like providing good customer service and a good quality product.
      • Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2005 and provide the ability to edit posts?

        I have a feeling they argued about this for a while, but decided that letting people correct their spelling mistackes and reword their awkwardly-worded phrases wasn't worth the trouble of rerendering the static pages. Not to mention all the weirdness that would occur if a clever troll posts something that is insightful, has it modded up to +5, then replaces the text with either goatse guy or a GNAA press release.

        • Re:sig (Score:2)

          by Tim C ( 15259 )
          That last will be the main excuse/justification, I suspect. Recreating the static page is hardly a problem at all - it has to be done for each newly posted comment anyway. There's just too much scope for abuse if editing comments was allowed, unless there was some sort of convoluted "view all previous versions" system in place.
          • Or, more simply, just nullify any positive moderation (but keep negative moderation) on edited posts. And ensure that metamoderation views the version of the post that was moderated or doesn't see old moderations at all.

    • the burden of proof is on you (Score:5, Insightful)

      by idlake ( 850372 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:40AM (#11477933)
      but unless we can come up with a better system that will help promote the advancement of arts and sciences without trampling on the rights of inventors and creators, this is the only system we've got.

      There is no evidence that the current system promotes the advancement of arts and sciences, or engineering for that matter.

      In fact, quite to the contrary, in software, we have pretty clear indiciations that patents are not required for advancement in software, and that they may actually be harmful.

      The best thing to do would be to take a hard look at the patent system and figure out how it can be rid of the badly-working parts and how to improve the parts that work well. Then perhaps we can have a fair and equitable system of patents.

      We don't have unlimited time. Software patents have been around for only about a decade now and they are already causing lots of damage. The burden is on people like you to come up with a system that demonstrably works, or we really should scrap the entire system.

      Granting people and companies 20 year monopolies is something extraordinary. The burden of proof that this is something we should do is on people like you who want to keep some form of the system. If you can't come up with clear and convincing evidence, we should scrap it.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What about using something that uses a firewall, something like:
        libusesfirewall.so
        or
        usefwall.dll

        ? I wonder.

        Or maybe:

        libdoesntuseafirewall.so

        and then a "third" party releases:
        libdoesuseafirewallreally.so

        implementing the same convenient function calls.
        Sam
      • And what is the USPTO's definition of a firewall? Does the USPTO have a convenient glossary wherein it is made very obvious when any other system does or does not constitute a firewall (or part thereof)?

        I suspect the writs will fly anyway.

      • Read the patent claim. It specifies "Using a Firewall". VisualRoute does not use a firewall, so they have nothing to fear.

        WTF did a specific instance (geographically mapping incoming connections on a firewall) of the common existing case (geographically mapping all connections on a general purpose computer) even make it past a first reading at the patent office?

        It's so bad I'm starting to think the patent office examiners are being paid off. With the stroke of a pen the gnomes at the patent office get

    • "but unless we can come up with a better system that will help promote the advancement of arts and sciences without trampling on the rights of inventors and creators, this is the only system we've got."

      Software has only recently been considered patentable; in fact the largest body of computer work by far was done before software was considered patentable.

      There's so many it would be foolish to list...real, actual advance...

      job scheduling
      protected memory
      lossless compression
      mice
      dynamic RAM
      static RAM
      virtual

    • Then perhaps we can have a fair and equitable system of patents.

      A fair system may involve no patents at all. For example, I think a system that did not give exclusive rights but limited rights only, and shared those rights amongst all independent inventors of the same thing, would probably be more equitable.

      Not necessarily disagreeing with your point but the standard of public debate on "intellectual products" and how to legally manage them is abysmal. All that people on the net, lawyers or otherwise,

  • Isn't there... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by smartsaga ( 804661 )
    a division of IP addresses per country and each country gets it's own share of IPs?
    I mean, if there is such division, distribution, assignments, etc. of ip addresses why not just poll a stinkin DNS server that knows how the IPs are distributed by country and ISP??
    I read that somewhere, too lazy to look without loosing my place in the first replys for this one.
    Have a good one.
    • Perhaps, still, no matter what, you can't really be sure of were an IP is located. The actual computer using the IP can basically be anywere in the world. Sure, move upwards to who was allocated the IP range to startr with, and wee were that company resides, but what good/use is that?

      As an example, take my computer at work. Despite being located in Sweden, it will always end up being decided to be in Finland since the company happens to be finnish.
    • Try this [geobytes.com]

  • Xtraceroute (Score:4, Informative)

    by MauMan ( 252382 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:30AM (#11477660) Homepage
    Great. I guess who were using Xtraceroute in the 90s to do this are now all SOL.
  • Considering that IANA and its brethren in other parts of the world document which domains they have, this sounds rather trivially easy. What's next? Someone is going to patent turning left when the left hand signal is on?

  • movie reference (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zeb-9000 ( 829101 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:32AM (#11477674)
    Am I the only one thinking of Jay and Silent Bob in the final moments of J&SBSB when they are touring america to put the beat down on the people that dissed them on the "internet" And shouldn't that count as prior art?

  • US freedom again (Score:5, Informative)

    by NYhXc ( 810051 ) <raisedfist@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:40AM (#11477709) Homepage
    USPTO shows up again! These people either are very uninformed or blind. How can they patent a thing that was used and invented a long time ago by other people. I remember I was using a visual traceroute program on win95 back in the 90's. I'm (still) proud I live in Europe, even if Romania (my country) is not yet a member of EU. I think I saw a visual traceroute program running on linux some years ago too... xtraceroute. Look on their web page here [chalmers.se] and scroll down to see when it was last modified. This gives you a clue how old the program is yet they didn't request a patent for that.

  • Firewall (Score:5, Interesting)

    by n2rjt ( 88804 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:42AM (#11477715) Journal
    IANAL and I didn't RTFP (read the fine patent) but I did RTFA. I was once taught that a patent covers a method for achieving an outcome. In the McAfee case, the method involves using logs collected on a firewall, then analyzing the origin based on the logs. I would guess that a competing product that directly sniffed the packets and analyzed the origin then produced a map wouldn't be infringing, because it would use a different method to achieve the same outcome.

  • This is why... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BossMC ( 696762 )
    This is why I keep _every_ that application that I have ever used. For example, Calamaris, a really nice squid stats generator, has fallen victim to software patent bullshit, but I still get to use it.

    Obviously, the affected applications are never going to be patched or updated, but it's still better than nothing. I will continue to do so, regardless of legality.
    • Calamaris is still available.
  • Scream Prior Art! From the top of my lungs.. But then i remember, that thankfully the EU has not legalised software patents yet. And i sincerely hope Poland will knock some sense into our MEPs. I wrote a letter to my MEP yesterday and was surprised to get a responce (!). They say they too are worried about software patents, thats why they are voting for it (!?) - Something with settling on the middle, bleh.
    • the problem is not the MEPs - they have already tried to block this. The problem is the Council of Ministers, i.e. your direct government representitives, appointed by the ruling party/coalition, that are trying to do an end-run around the European Parliment. Even though their own national MPs are trying to stop them, they seem to be either in the pay of big corporations, or wish to bow to US pressure to "normalize" trade relations.

      What a fetid swamp politics is...
    • I wrote a letter to my MEP yesterday and was surprised to get a responce

      What's the betting you got a boilerplate reply as a response? Something along the lines of: "The [Political Party] supported an amendment to the definition, so that 'In order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible of industrial application and new and involve an inventive step. In order to involve an inventive step, a computer-implemented invention must make a technical contribution'."?

      Be aware, th

  • I'm a little affraid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by exes ( 853401 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:44AM (#11477731) Homepage Journal
    Software patents scare the living crap out of me. I fear a world where Microsoft has a patent on "Operating System" I think it's total bullshit that people can even do this. First off, I bet McAfee has some C++ programming in it... which derives from C, which was created by Dennis Ritchie... so where is his cut? Everything we do, builds on something someone else did. In most cases, those things aren't necessarily things that someone did for money. It's a sad deal that this patent crap came into effect and is possible... Maybe I'm in over my head a little bit. Can someone still release an open source GPL product that does the same thing as McAfee's deal and be untouchable?

    • Re:I'm a little affraid (Score:4, Informative)

      by nzkoz ( 139612 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:17AM (#11477856) Homepage

      Maybe I'm in over my head a little bit. Can someone still release an open source GPL product that does the same thing as McAfee's deal and be untouchable?



      No, if this patent is upheld noone can release any similar functionality under any license for any reason. More or less.



      Having said that, a patent is more or less useless until the patent owner successfully sues someone. Until a court upholds their patent it's just an assertion that's 'checked' by the USPTO. But I sure wouldn't want to be the poor bastard sued first .....

    • Ah, but with patents I can take your existing product (license), extend it and patent my extension. To build on top of others work and let others build on top of mine. (Sounds a bit like the GPL*)

      So I buy a license for your "invention" to be used in my "invention". I then sell my "invention" to others to use.

      *The fundamental difference with patents is that I am free to charge whatever I want for my extension and no body is allowed to entend your product in the same way that I have.

    • be very afraid (Score:5, Interesting)

      by edward.virtually@pob ( 6854 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @03:28AM (#11478100)
      Can someone still release an open source GPL product that does the same thing as McAfee's deal and be untouchable?

      no, and existing programs aren't really safe either -- the "prior art" defense is mostly a fantasy. in a legal battle between the typical large corporation and the typical freeware developer, the latter will be living in the street LONG before they can use the "prior art" defense -- assuming they have a good enough lawyer to successfully use it, and a judge that will accept it. some of us have been screaming about the danger of software patents to the right to program since the mid-90s. pity nobody paid attention then. too late now. hang on to your tar bundles, because sooner than you think you won't be able to get them anymore. at least in countries with software patents -- the us, the eu, etc.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • JESUS H CHRIST IN A CHICKEN BASKET! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chuqmystr ( 126045 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:54AM (#11477760) Homepage
    ***WARNING, KNEE-JERK REACTION FOLLOWS***

    For the love of whatever! Is nothing sacred? I finaly found something, a nice combo of BSD/Linux/OS X over various devices that returned a bit of control to my computing experience. Mind you, I've been into this since the very begining of PC use. And now, some greedy fuck (whom is OS specific none the less) needs to step in and take advantage of one of the most chiken-shit money grabs in the known world, the USPTO. Sigh... Yeh, yeh, prior art, blah blah. There's plenty of flesh-eating lawyers out there for MacFuckify to employ and possibly make this a pain in the ass for some time to come. Goddamn you windoze and all the leaches on your digi-herpies infested ass. If this flys, I'm going ludite right down to the use of an abacus. Fuck it, I'm tired...

  • ...the existence of prior art matters to the USPTO ?

    hopefully, poland will keep stopping each attempt to put the software patents issue on the menu of the various european agriculture, fishing, wanking, ... minister meeting

    • Government by bribe ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quarkscat ( 697644 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @04:14AM (#11478252)
      The same problem that is readily apparent to any /.er about the USPTO exists within the FDA, the SEC, etcetera. The massive push to (a) de-regulate industry and (b) fund government oversight organizations through user fees has totally skewed the relationship between government and industry. More "user fees" means more money for government agencies that they have not been getting from the Congress. IMHO, this is also a big part of the reason why the US government appears to function on behalf of industry instead of its citizens. The USA's democracy has devolved into a "government by, of, and for the corporations" instead of "the people".
  • I'm shocked it took so long.
    McAfee bought Neoworx in 2002, and the NeoWatch firewall was the first one that I had seen that would automatically do a little graphical trace for you. Basically a firewall with a cheapo neotrace embedded in it (you could also use the full version if you had it)
    I used neowatch ... shit, it's been years. I recall running it on a Windows 95 or 98 system, I'm pretty sure it was the first one out there.
    The patent is pretty narrow though, If they were first, I don't see much to bit

  • A modest proposal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:04AM (#11477806) Homepage
    Can we just have a 10 year haiatus on software patents of any kind, please? So far most of them have been single descriptor patents...
    [blatently unpatentable thing] + "on the internets"
    [blatently unpatentable thing] + "automagically"
    [blatently unpatentable thing] + "in a browser"
    And now we have
    [blatently unpatentable thing] + "with a Firewall"

    None of this should be patentable. New and truly novel approaches to computing issues should be, but those are exactly the types of things which are too important to patent. Where would computing be today if patents covered the concepts of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, evolutionary algorithims, or for that matter object-oriented programming and distributed networks?

    Patents were supposed to be unlikely to be duplicated. Theoretically, if I wanted to do something and I didn't know how, I would have to turn to somebody with a patent. However, these days it's impossible to blow your nose without first calling a lawyer to figure out if someone patented nose-blowing in such a way. And chances are someone has.

    We should just shut software patents down for 10 years, let the technology mature, then re-examine whether they're helping or slowing us down. In 10 years time we may have exhausted enough of the obvious things that only patentable things will remain.

    • Patents were supposed to be unlikely to be duplicated.

      Where'd you get that idea? If it was unlikely to be duplicated, the innovator would just keep it a trade secret. That way, he doesn't have to tell anyone how it works.

      If OO programming had been patented, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Simula was made in, what, '67? So the patent would have expired in '81, which is about when people started caring.

      I agree with your main point, though, that doing something old in a new context doesn't make
    • No, patents were meant to be nonobvious. (So where does the phrase 'patently obvious' come from?) They were also meant to contain enough detail that the invention/process/whatever could be duplicated by somebody 'knowledgable in the field' after the patent expires.
      Too many modern patents go the other way - obvious solutions to common problems and deliberately vague so that any other good ideas somebody else thinks of afterwards can be claimed as being included.

  • Prior Art, Part MCXII (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:05AM (#11477811) Homepage Journal
    Most of the examples don't quite fit the description. A much closer parallel is a NIDS system actively linked to a firewall, such that when an intrusion is detected, the NIDS can reprogram the firewall to block the attacker.


    You could probably program the "remotes" on the Aaphid NIDS system to do the job. There are commercial systems that certainly work like this. Judging by the descriptions given in the Internet Audit Project, some time back, the military and intelligence networks also have such systems.


    Perhaps the "perfect fit" would be an active firewall/NIDS system (for you counter-intrusion) and some sort of packet analyzer and/or active scanning software to establish the identity of the real attacker.


    Again, such software is certainly around and is nothing particularly new or exciting. Many of the fancier NIDS packages use Bayesian filters to look for abnormal behavior, as opposed to looking for specific attack patterns. If you want to be really fancy, you stick a honeypot in parallel with the real firewall, disguising the honeypot as a firewall in its own right. Everything that goes to it is obviously bogus traffic.


    The problem with the US patent office is that they don't search for prior art. Well, they get too many patents to do that efficiently, so they trust the person filing, until someone complains. If the patent is overturned, the filer can sometimes get their money back.


    Supposedly, during "patent pending", problems can be ironed out. They often aren't, because companies are loath to expose "trade secrets" or other unpublished information, and Joe Bloggs doesn't have the money or (in many cases) any standing to object. (Courts are very fussy about people having standing in a case.)


    The "minimum change" solution would be for all court costs and lawyer costs to be loaned by the Government, with the loser in the case having to pay back the loan for both sides, plus interest. That way, frivolous objections would become too expensive, but so would frivolous patent claims.


    As for this system - I say ignore the patent and use pre-existing solutions that do the same thing. This is a situation where "civil disobedience" is not only possible, but also low-risk. McAfee is unlikely to be vigorous in the pursuit of their IP, if it was pretty certain they'd lose any case and be humiliated.

    • The problem with the patent office isn't that they don't search for prior art... they do, but the search is done by narrow-minded bureaucrats without spinal cords or any reasonable technical knowledge.

      Another problem plaguing the system is that patents are written by patent attorneys so that they are as broad as possible. The patent holder wants the loosest possible definition so they might chase down patent infringers, and also so that they might take the narrowest scope possible when being chased for

  • Please (Score:2)

    by ceeam ( 39911 )
    US lawyers, do us all a favor and legalize yourselves out of existence. Please?
  • Wait now - this will trace the IP Address to physical location? But what if I work in a company with my HQ in the US. I get a B Class of IP addresses and break it up internally across the world. Thus even though the IP address is registered as US the user could be in Germany and could be accessing the Internet through Cork? Thus the trace gives the location of the 'Owner' of the IP range, but this may not be the physcial location of the user! Think about it!
    • You are right: in the general case this just isn't possible. I have an IP address that is always resolved as "San Diego, California" but actually it is in the Netherlands, Europe.
      When looking up a cable or DSL address you usually get the address of the ISP head office instead of the particular customer, and this could be very far off in a large country.

      However, there are companies that now offer mor exact location service per individual IP address.
      They keep a database that relates IP address to postal cod
    • Ignoring the comic idea of your company getting a class B these days, yes, you are right, there is no guarantee. The companies and organizations building databases for this tend to start out with the ARIN/APNIC/RIPE databases and massage the data a lot by creating huge lists of exceptions, which obviously won't cover companies that spread their IP space out without making the fact known (for instance like ISP's that use blatantly obvious contractions of location names in DNS).

      Combine that with tracing the

  • Not surprising that McAfee has done this - all of the companies in the security space are scrambling to patent their IP in the hope of gaining a competitive advantage and/or additional revenue streams from technology licensing. Of course, many of these cannot be enforced - prior art exists for most of the technology either in a ademic publications or in some cases in fiction and in the movies!

    Another example is the signature based dynamic NIDS patent [uspto.gov] that Symantec acquired through an acquisition. This is

  • Microsoft go one better and patent network topographies, frames and packets, then follow up by having a scottish-sounding trademark missappropriated to them by 'accident'.

    Apple come out and patent multi-coloured cabling and cable ends.

    IBM come out and patent the all metals in the periodic table, including TCP - twisted copper pair, and new element.

    SCO claim that Adams signed over the rights to Eden, and start suing all carbon based lifeforms.

    A small new zealand company finds that it invented fiber optic
  • In Poland you Firewall isn't patented!

    Not quite catchy, but I love Poland, and I am going there on holiday, and I am going to hug some polish people and cry real tears on thier shoulders, and maybe do the dirty with some fit lesbo polish teens [google.com].

    nice
  • In many fields, including software, there are just so many potentially useful ideas that any idea is unlikely to be thought of (let alone published as prior art) beforehand, instead many of them are just discovered when one stumble upon a problem where such an idea is actually useful. For example, it may not be hard to see that it is a good idea to use data structure A in problem P, once one sees the problem, but probably no one will think of that idea before problem P actually becomes a problem that needs

  • Here's what I think covers the patent:

    METHOD for determining the geographic location of an intrusion attack

    I claim

    1. A firewall is a mechanism for detecting and blocking a incoming network package

    2. Said firewall detects and records the attempt of an unauthorized network connection to a system(s) connected to the internet (Patented and invented by Al Gore)

    3. Using a Traceroute (patented by Holmes, Sherlock, historical patent: how to track intruders when they leave their home address), the true identity

  • I wrote and distributed prior art in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Diesel Dave ( 95048 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @06:27AM (#11478637)
    I developed an distributed advanced firewalling intrusion detection appliance, with realtime event alerting, tied to a monitored service that provided a (server side) web based report generation engine.

    This commercial product was developed in August 2001, and the specific event related ip info/trace type features that exactly match this patent (minus the 'map' image) were implemented into the report generator no later then the 2nd week of January 2002, immediately put into production for all current customers to access, and specifically demonstrated to a potential customer withing days. This falls before the February 8, 2002 application date of this patent.

    Anyone looking to make a formal challenge to this patent contact me. dcinege ****AT*** psychosis dot com

  • Oh damn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @09:15AM (#11479453) Journal
    Even I've written prior art on that, in 2001. The connecting to a firewall for realtime traffic data, intrusion detection, and displaying their locations on a map using reverse dns and whois part. And I was just imitating another product made years before.

  • Figures... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by st0rmshad0w ( 412661 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:56AM (#11480625)
    This from the people who make you dependant on IE for antivirus updates. Absolutely unbelievable.

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