Identification of file infecting viruses through detection of self-reference replication

This paper presents an approach to detecting known and unknown file infecting viruses based on their attempt to replicate. The approach does not require any prior knowledge about previously discovered viruses. Detection is accomplished at runtime by monitoring currently executing processes attempting to replicate. Replication is the fundamental characteristic of a virus and is consistently present in all viruses making this approach applicable to viruses belonging to many classes and executing under several conditions. An implementation prototype of our detection approach called SRRAT is created and tested on the Microsoft Windows operating systems focusing on the tracking of user mode Win32 API system calls and Kernel mode system services.