Network Associates granted patent for virus technology

Network Associates today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted them a virus scanning technology patent for its McAfee AV software range.

The patented anti-viral technology works by transforming the text found on a scanned web page, or text contained within a virus, into a format the engine can more accurately understand.

After removing whitespaces, gaps in the text that are different in the code of a virus' makeup to that of a text file, the software returns a match with the original. Otherwise, it is taken as evidence of the presence of a bug.

Jack Clark, a spokesman for Network Associates subsidiary McAfee, described the patent as another step forward in their generic detection method.

He added: "It simply allows us to be more accurate in detecting VBS scripts and other text-based infections we see in the wild."

The patent, No. 6,230,288, is entitled Method of treating whitespace during virus detection.