Systems and methods for countering persistent malware

Abstract

Some embodiments construct an entity map describing a group of inter-related entities and determine whether a computing device comprises malware according to the respective entity map. The entity map includes worker entities (e.g., processes) and resource entities (e.g., files) accessed by the respective worker entities. Some entity maps are persistently stored and recovered in response to a reboot, enabling a complete reconstruction of a kill chain even when malicious activities are distributed among multiple entities and multiple computing sessions. Some embodiments detect infection by comparing a current entity map with a signature map describing at least a fragment of a known attack.