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Symantec Patents Multiple File Area Virus Scanning
DigitumDei writes "Symantec announced on Wednesday that it has aquired a new patent (United States Patent - 6,851,057) titled "Data driven detection of viruses". Symantec has declined to comment on whether it will pursue litigation. Symantec's director of intellectual property Michael Schallop stated : 'We don't generally discuss how we will leverage this patent against competitors or others,'." From the article: "[The patent] could refer to any technology that allows antivirus researchers or antivirus products to use scripting to determine, dynamically, where in a file to scan and detect threats. It could also include the use of Javascript or other common scripting languages to direct antivirus scanning..."
Here we go again... just another one of those slashdot posts about how the patent system is clearly flawed... Even I can't help ranting about it! Patents are granted to everybody who applies, and it's just left up to the courts to decide if it's valid or not.
...patents *do* have a place, they're just mis-used (and the system's broken). If a small developer could get a patent for $20, but then the next patent cost $40 and then $80 and so on, it would really discourage people from getting tons of patents. ...just a thought (I'm sure it's been suggested before...)
Companies just amass huge patent libraries. Hm... there should really be an exponential cost increase with each patent the company owns. That would prevent big companies from getting thousands and thousands of useless unenforcable patents.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
before anyone starts frothing at the mouth and gives the usual /. response of "What? Someone got a patent? Kill! Kill! Kill!", please read claims 1, 8 and 14 (the independent claims).
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I love how patents encourage innovation. Now Symantec will be able to lock up the market and really innovate some cool stuff!
The U.S. is granting too many patents for too broad of topics. It's coming to a point where even new things can't be created simply because a patent exists that, not only covers part of the new invention, but the entire GENRE of the invention.
They need to reform the patent law before it gets even more out of hand than it already is... Up next: a patent for "any process whereas pages of paper are bound together.."
Finding out whether a file is infected by a virus is a case of looking at the file and seeing if that virus signature is present in the file. This is likely to be done by a program as its easier. These chunks of virus code will live in different places dependent on the type of file being effected. This is all obvious. Surely this patent isn't worth a damn as it can be challenged as such.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
It is not the responsibility of the Federal Government to
A)Protect your business model.
B)Ensure you can "pay back your investors for a long shot" This patent is bullshit, it's like EA, just eliminate all competition, then what incentive is there to change or improve? None, slap 2006 on it and ship it. I want a patent on "Exchanging Oxygen for Carbon Dioxide utilizing organic muscle structures", and sue everyone who breathes.
I hate sigs.
I fully support companies retaining ownership of their intellectual property. However, how granular do we go. This is remincient of e-commerce being patented. If we follow old patent laws, we will surely stifle creativity. In contrast, if we do not have patents, we will likely stifle creativity since no one can claim ownership to their idea and profit accordingly.
I can not wait for someone to file a patent for a virus, when the US patent office can accept this then they are sure to accept that too.
Spammers are suing those who filter their crap away, next thing we know virus authors are suing anti-virus vendors... it is truely a brave new world.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Why do American corproate idiots insist on saying 'leverage' when they mean 'use'? It sounds so lame.
I say Symantec should just patent viruses and charge royalty fees on whoever decides to make them.
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""Data driven detection of viruses". "
how else are you going to detect them?
Now that Microsoft is getting into the anti-virus biz and presumably shipping it with the OS, Symantec knows its days are numbered.
Could someone give better summary claim by claim?
I'll provide the claims here to give a starting point. Let's try to actually see what's getting patented here and whether or not it really is novel.
If you write closed-source software, how would anyone prove your code infringes on a patent, unless they violate other laws and reverse engineer your program?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Actually, I take my previous comment back. This ~is~ a reasonable patent for Symantec. Go and actually read it. In it's entirety, it probably is non-obvious, and is a reasonable patent, though nothing particularly stellar.
It's especially not a problem because working around it doesn't look hard at all. You can do everything they do in the patent, for example, ommitting any intermediary code (P-Code), and you apparently wouldn't be violating it.
For that matter; the patent's main application is for files with multiple entry points and scanning specifically for polymorphic viruses using a scripting engine capable of handling different pieces of code off to different analysis engines and passing things around.
Again, not exactly brilliant, but probably a reasonable patent; also because it's probably not hard to code around.
Microsoft should patent some of its security flaws, it could make a killing by licensing the ability to patch said flaws to anti-virus companies.
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First, the person who wrote the text should be shot... it's worded to be as confusing as possible, so that even an expert in the field can't readily tell what is being covered in the patent.
Next, from what I can tell, the patent seems to cover 3 main points (in various flavors, to come up with their 20 points): All of these points were done years ago. The first two points were "state of the art" as of 1990. The product I worked on (name withheld for various reasons. Sorry about that...) was, at the time, unlike the other virus scanners out there. It used "precision scanning" in which the nature of the virus being scanned for was taken into account, and was scanned for ONLY AT THE LOCATION AT WHICH THE INFECTION WOULD OCCUR. This was a major differentiation from the "bulk scanners" (i.e. run the entire file through a string filter that contains all virus signatures, and see if there are any matches. As a trivia note, "bulk scanners" are why all anti-virus scanners use encrypted (in some trivial way) virus signatures -- so that a virus scanner would not be identified as an infected file by another virus scanner, or even by itself!) that all other major anti-virus vendors used.
Also, the virus scanner I wrote included a scripting language so that users could add their own virus scan and remove definitions.
As for emulating a virus target and seeing if the virus "bites", that is also old hat. While a commercial product was never introduced, a lab prototype was publically demonstrated in 1996, in which files under examination were interpreted in a virtual 80x86 environment, including OS and file system, both to see if they did anything suspicious, and to see if they "tagged along" on "provocative" system calls.
And, yes, I still have my old code sitting around. It would be a pity if someone suddenly showed it to Symantec or the patent office...
While talking to my boss Chris about how Mcafee patented the firewall a few weeks back He made the point: "Do you think the guy who awarded the patent even know what a firewall is?" I think the point still stands.
Behold, another webcomic!
I disagree, all they've done is change their virus definition (a series of tokens in some format) to pseudo code (a different series of tokens in some other format with program like qualities).
I presume the other virus programs already use IF and LOOP tokens to handle polymorphism of virus's because polymorphism is already detected by other companies products.
What interests me, is that if this was a patent for a Spinning Jenny we would *know* if there is prior art from looking at the previous machines and I wouldn't have to 'presume' anything.
But because this is software we have to guess whether other companies use programming constructs like IF and LOOP in their virus definition files that would qualify as the use of P-Code in virus detectors.
I also wonder if they need the patent to protect that idea, if they don't document the virus file format who would know?
Seems to me if they didn't disclose it and it was a real invention then they would have plenty of opportunity to make money from it.
Its like patents are being used as a fight mechanism..... and Symantic has hit out with a left patent hook, meanwhile McAfee strikes with a sneaky undercut design patent.....
rather than a mechanism to reward invention.