System and method for validating and controlling applications

1. A method of validating and controlling applications comprising:

computing a plurality of parameters for a validated digital object and for a tested digital object, wherein the tested digital object is an application being validated;

computing a plurality of comparison metrics based on said parameters, wherein computing at least one of said metrics comprises performing a membership-check to determine if a parameter associated with said tested digital object is a member of a predefined group and wherein said membership-check comprises utilizing a Bloom filter;

utilizing said plurality of comparison metrics to compute a measure of difference between said validated digital object and said tested digital object;

providing an indication of a level of validity of the tested digital object based on the comparison metrics; and

controlling an execution of said application according to the level of validity, wherein controlling comprises disabling an operation of the application if the level of validity is within a preconfigured range.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said measure of difference is selected from the list consisting of: equality and difference.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one of said metrics is a code comparison metric of executable code segments and wherein computing said code comparison metric comprises:

disassembling a code segment;

dividing said disassembled code segment into functional blocks corresponding to a control flow of said executable code; and

comparing said functional blocks with respective functional blocks associated with said validated digital object.

4. The method of claim 3 , comprising:

generating stripped functional blocks by stripping address-specific data from said functional blocks; and

comparing said stripped functional blocks with respective stripped functional blocks associated with said validated executable code segment.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising using said plurality of parameters computed for a validated object to compute a plurality of difference measures between said validated object and a respective plurality of tested objects.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein said validated object and said tested object comprise a plurality of elements and wherein computing said measure of difference comprises:

computing a plurality of difference measures pertaining to at least some of said elements; and

computing a composite measure of difference based on said plurality of difference measures.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said validated object and said tested object are stored in one of: a volatile memory, a nonvolatile memory and a storage device.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said digital object is selected from the list consisting of: an application, an application extension, a dynamic library, a device driver and a folder.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein said measure of difference is a numeric value.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein said tested digital object is an application and wherein said controlling comprises controlling access rights of said application.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein said controlling comprises controlling execution rights of said application.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein said computed plurality of parameters for a validated digital object are stored in a storage device and wherein computing a plurality of comparison metrics comprises retrieving said parameters from said storage device.

13. The method of claim 10 , wherein said storage device is one of: a volatile memory, a nonvolatile memory, a USB storage device and a hard drive.