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US 7,549,055 B2Granted
Pre-boot firmware based virus scanner
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsVincent J. Zimmer, Michael A. Rothman
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present disclosure relates to allowing the utilization of a virus scanner and cleaner that operates primarily in the pre-boot phase of computer operation and, more particularly, to allowing the utilization of a virus scanner and cleaner that operates primarily during the loading of an operating system.
Claims29
A processor implemented method comprising:
- during a pre-boot phase of a system having a processor, an operating system (OS) loader, a file system handler, and a pre-boot virus scanner, all operated by the processor, and a boot phase following the pre-boot phase,
- invoking the OS loader to load an OS,
- invoking, by the OS loader, the file system handler instead of the OS,
- loading by the file system handler, files associated with a file system of the OS,
- scanning the files loaded by the file system handler by the pre-boot virus scanner, the scanning including
- attempting by the pre-boot virus scanner to determine if the scanned files are infected with a virus before attempting to store the scanned files into a memory, and
- assigning by the pre-boot virus scanner a virus state to the scanned files based at least in part upon whether the at least one scanned file is or are infected with a virus, and
- on completion of the scanning, conditionally loading the OS by the OS loader to transition the system into the boot phase, based at least in part on the results of the scanning by the pre-boot virus scanner.
5 more elements
An apparatus comprising:
- an operating system (OS) loader to load an OS and to load files into a memory during or after a boot phase of the apparatus and to, during a pre-boot phase, invoke a file system handler instead of the OS;
- the file system handler to load, during the pre-boot phase, files stored within a file system of the Os;
- and
- a pre-boot virus scanner, coupled to the OS loader and the file system handler, to scan files loaded by the file system handler, including attempting to determine if the scanned files are infected with a virus before attempting to store the scanned files into a memory and assigning a virus state to the scanned files based at least in part upon whether the at least one scanned file is or are infected with a virus
- wherein, on completion of the scanning, the OS loader is to conditionally load the OS to transition the system into the boot phase, based at least in part on the results of the scanning by the pre-boot virus scanner.
2 more elements
An article, comprising:
- a storage medium having a plurality of machine accessible instructions, wherein when the instructions are executed by a processor of a system having an operating system (OS) loader, a file system handler, and a pre-boot virus scanner, all operated by the processor, the instructions provide for:
- during a pre-boot phase of the system, prior to a boot phase of the system,
- invoking the OS loader to load an OS,
- invoking, by the OS loader, the file system handler instead of the OS,
- loading by the file system handler, files associated with a file system of the operating system,
- scanning the files loaded by the file system handler by the pre-boot virus scanner, the scanning including,
- attempting by the pre-boot virus scanner to determine if the scanned files are infected with a virus before attempting to store the scanned files into a memory, and
- assigning by the pre-boot virus scanner a virus state to the scanned files based at least in part upon whether the at least one scanned file is or are infected with a virus, and
- on completion of the scanning, conditionally loading the OS by the OS loader to transition the system into the boot phase, based at least in part on the results of the scanning by the pre-boot virus scanner.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.