Detection of exploitative program code

Abstract

The present disclosure is directed to monitoring internal process memory of a computer at a time with program code executes. Methods and apparatus consistent with the present disclosure monitor the operation of program code with the intent of detecting whether received program inputs may exploit vulnerabilities that may exist in the program code at runtime. By detecting suspicious activity or malicious code that may affect internal process memory at run-time, methods and apparatus described herein identify suspected malware based on suspicious actions performed as program code executes. Runtime exploit detection may detect certain anomalous activities or chain of events in a potentially vulnerable application during execution. These events may be detected using instrumentation code when a regular code execution path of an application is deviated from.