Patents by Inventor William Russell Melicher

William Russell Melicher has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 11973780
    Abstract: Techniques for deobfuscating and decloaking web-based malware with abstract execution is disclosed. In some embodiments, a system/process/computer program product for deobfuscating and decloaking web-based malware with abstract execution includes receiving a sample; performing an abstract execution of a script included in the sample; identifying the sample as malware based on the abstract execution of the script included in the sample; and generating a log of results from the abstract execution of the script included in the sample.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 13, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 30, 2024
    Assignee: Palo Alto Networks, Inc.
    Inventors: William Russell Melicher, Oleksii Starov
  • Publication number: 20240095361
    Abstract: An execution environment has been designed that detects likely data exfiltration by using taint tracking and abstract execution. The execution environment is instrumented to monitor for use of functions identified as having functionality for transferring data out of an execution environment. In addition, heuristics-based rules are defined to mark or “taint” objects (e.g., variables) that are likely targets for exfiltration. With taint tracking and control flow analysis, the execution environment tracks the tainted objects through multiple execution paths of a code sample. After comprehensive code coverage, logged use of the monitored functions are examined to determine whether any tainted objects were passed to the monitored functions. If so, the logged use will indicate a destination or sink for the tainted source. Each tainted source-sink association can be examined to verify whether the exfiltration was malicious.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 20, 2023
    Publication date: March 21, 2024
    Inventors: William Russell Melicher, Mohamed Yoosuf Mohamed Nabeel, Oleksii Starov
  • Publication number: 20230254338
    Abstract: Techniques for automated generation of behavioral signatures for malicious web campaigns are disclosed. In some embodiments, a system/process/computer program product for automated generation of behavioral signatures for malicious web campaigns includes crawling a plurality of web sites associated with a malware campaign; determining discriminating repeating attributes (e.g., behavior related attributes, which can be determined using dynamic analysis, and static related attributes, which can be determined using static analysis) as malware campaign related footprint patterns, wherein the discriminating repeating attributes are not associated with benign web sites; and automatically generating a human-interpretable malware campaign signature based on the malware campaign related footprint patterns.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 31, 2023
    Publication date: August 10, 2023
    Inventors: William Russell Melicher, Oleksii Starov, Shresta Bellary Seetharam, Shaown Sarker
  • Publication number: 20220116411
    Abstract: Techniques for deobfuscating and decloaking web-based malware with abstract execution is disclosed. In some embodiments, a system/process/computer program product for deobfuscating and decloaking web-based malware with abstract execution includes receiving a sample; performing an abstract execution of a script included in the sample; identifying the sample as malware based on the abstract execution of the script included in the sample; and generating a log of results from the abstract execution of the script included in the sample.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 13, 2021
    Publication date: April 14, 2022
    Inventors: William Russell Melicher, Oleksii Starov