Classifying portable executable files as malware or whiteware

摘要

An improved approach for classifying portable executable files as malicious (malware) or benign (whiteware) is disclosed. The invention classifies portable executable files as malware or whiteware after using Bayes Theorem to evaluate each observable feature of each file with respect to other observable features of the same portable executable file with reference to statistical information gathered from repositories of known whiteware and malware files.