Computer augmented threat evaluation

Abstract

An automated system attempts to characterize code as safe or unsafe. For intermediate code samples not placed with sufficient confidence in either category, human-readable analysis is automatically generated to assist a human reviewer in reaching a final disposition. For example, a random forest over human-interpretable features may be created and used to identify suspicious features in a manner that is understandable to, and actionable by, a human reviewer. Similarly, a k-nearest neighbor algorithm may be used to identify similar samples of known safe and unsafe code based on a model for, e.g., a file path, a URL, an executable, and so forth. Similar code may then be displayed (with other information) to a user for evaluation in a user interface. This comparative information can improve the speed and accuracy of human interventions by providing richer context for human review of potential threats.