Kaspersky Awarded Patent for Hardware-based Antivirus Solution

Posted 02/16/2010 at 7:04am | by Paul Lilly

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Kaspersky on Monday announced it has been successful in patenting a hardware-based antivirus system designed primarily for fighting rootkits.

Patent No. 7,657,941 was registered earlier this month and describes a technology developed by Oleg Zaitsev, senior technology expert at Kaspersky Lab. The patent describes a device that is installed between a hard drive or SSD and the computing unit (CPU or RAM) and connected to a system bus. It can also be integrated into the disk controller. The hardware solution decides whether or not to allow or block writing data to disk.

"Antivirus solutions and malware are both types of software with similar rights," says Oleg Zaitsev, Technology Expert at Kaspersky Lab. "This is where a hardware-based antivirus solution has a distinct advantage over conventional AV solutions because it monitors all attempts to access a memory device while remaining inaccessible to malware. This is critical for fighting such sophisticated threats as rootkits and bootkits."

Kaspersky claims this solution is particularly effective since it's implemented on the hardware level and isn't dependent on the OS's configuration. It also "integrates seamlessly with other security solutions," Zaitsev added, and could find use in server software and specialized computers like ATMs.