System and method for locating malware
A system and method for managing malware is described. One embodiment is designed to receive an initial URL associated with a Web site; download content from that Web site; identify any obfuscation techniques used to hide malware or pointers to malware; interpret those obfuscation techniques; identify a new URL as a result of interpreting the obfuscation techniques; and add the new URL to a URL database.
1. A method for identifying Web sites that may include malware, the method comprising:
receiving an initial Uniform Resource Locator (URL) associated with a Web site;
downloading content associated with the initial URL, the content including Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), a script program, and code related to a button-click event that executes a function;
searching the HTML in the downloaded content for an embedded URL;
identifying a non-obfuscated URL in the script program;
identifying an obfuscated URL in the script program;
executing the function corresponding to the button-click event;
receiving a new URL as a result of executing the function;
adding the embedded URL, the non-obfuscated URL and the new URL to a URL database; and
adding a high-priority indicator to the URL database, the high-priority indicator corresponding to the obfuscated URL.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
searching the HTML for a text string corresponding to malware.
3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
searching the script program for a text string corresponding to malware.
4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
identifying obfuscated text strings in the script program; and
interpreting the obfuscated text strings.
5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
adding the initial URL to the URL database; and
responsive to identifying obfuscated text strings in the script program, adding a high-priority indicator to the URL database, the high-priority indicator corresponding to the initial URL.
6. A method for identifying malware, the method comprising:
receiving an initial Uniform Resource Locator (URL) associated with a Web site;
downloading content associated with the initial URL, the content including a script program;
identifying obfuscation techniques in the script program;
interpreting the obfuscation techniques;
identifying a new URL as a result of interpreting the obfuscation techniques;
adding the new URL to a URL database; and
adding a high-priority indicator to the URL database, the high-priority indicator corresponding to the new URL and the high-priority indicator indicating that the new URL is likely to be associated with malware.
7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
downloading additional content from a Web site associated with the new URL; and
determining whether the additional content downloaded from the Web site associated with the new URL includes malware.
8. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
downloading additional content from the new URL;
identifying an additional embedded link in the additional content; and adding the additional embedded link to the URL database.
9. A method for identifying malware, the method comprising:
downloading content associated with an initial Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the content including an object and an embedded URL;
extracting the embedded URL from the content;
adding the extracted URL to a URL database;
determining whether the object can be verified through text searching;
responsive to the object not being verifiable through text searching, passing the object to an active browser configured to execute the object automatically and to record configuration changes to a computer system on which the active browser operates that occur as a result of executing the object; and
examining the configuration changes to determine whether the object is malware.
10. The method of claim 9 , wherein determining whether the object can be verified through text searching comprises:
determining whether the object includes obfuscated text.
11. The method of claim 9 , wherein determining whether the object can be verified through text searching comprises:
determining whether the object includes a form that requires submittal to a remote computer.
12. The method of claim 9 , wherein determining whether the object can be verified through text searching comprises:
determining whether the object includes a button click event that is configured to run a function.