Method of gaining secure access to intranet resources

1. Method of gaining secure access from a host to Intranet resources provided by a content server in a data transmission system wherein the host is connected to the content server through a gateway, wherein said host and gateway are peer devices, the method comprising the steps of:

generating and sending at predetermined transmission intervals from either the host or gateway, verification messages wherein each verification message contains a signature which depends upon the data exchanged between the host and the gateway, preceding said each verification message, the host and gateway utilizing an algorithm which determines whether the host or gateway sends a verification message at each of the predetermined intervals,

wherein the predetermined transmission intervals are provided by a timer T in the host and gateway and are defined utilizing a secret key shared by both peer devices.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein a timer R in the peer devices defines the reception intervals during which the verification message sent by a first peer device is received by the other peer device, the reception intervals for each of the peer devices corresponding to the predetermined transmission intervals for the other peer device with an additional delay equal to the transmission time.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the verification message sent at a predetermined transmission interval by the first peer device must be received by the other peer device within a first predetermined time slot after the reception interval corresponding to the predetermined transmission interval to be considered as being valid, and further comprising the step of sending an acknowledgement message back from the other peer device to the first peer device when the verification message is received within the first time slot.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein a check message is sent back by the other peer device to the first peer device when the verification message is not received within the first time slot, and further comprising the step of activating abort and log alert procedures in the other peer device.

5. The method of claim 3 , wherein the acknowledgment message must be received by the first peer device within a second predetermined time slot after the end of the first time slot to be considered as being valid, and further comprising the step of activating abort and log alert procedures in the first peer device.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein a reset message is transmitted by the first peer device to the other peer device upon detection of a secure event, the reset message initializing a procedure of aborting the connection and logging an alert when received by the other peer device.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the connection between the peer devices is re-started if a secure event is validated and wherein the connection is not re-started and an alert is logged if a secure event is not validated.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the validation of the secure event is either a local validation after displaying a POP UP window on the user screen of the host or an administrative validation after forwarding a request to a network administrator.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the validation of the secure event includes a change of IP or MAC address of the gateway.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising the step of activating a secure event when an IP source address of a data packet does not match the corresponding MAC address in a mapping table.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein each of peer devices generates the same pseudo-random sequence to exchange IP data packets and wherein the value of the sequence number is determined by a predetermined algorithm.

12. The method according to claim 11 , wherein the pseudo-random sequence number is created using an original packet sequence number and a signature or secret key is used by the peer devices to recreate the original packet sequence number.