Malicious processes, such as malware infections, have plagued organizations and users for years, and are growing stealthier and increasing in number by the day. These malicious processes were originally created to attain notoriety or for fun, but today malware deployment is mostly motivated by economic gains. There are reports of active underground markets for personal information, credit cards, logins into sensitive machines in the United States, etc. Also, malicious processes, such as malware processes, have been developed to target specific computers for espionage purposes (industrial espionage or otherwise) and/or for sabotage.
Despite the existence of anti-virus software, malware threats (as well as threats from other types of malicious processes) persist and are growing. Unfortunately, there are numerous ways to subvert commercial anti-virus software, including simply disabling the anti-virus system. Furthermore, malware can mutate into new variants, which makes static detection of malware difficult.
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