Using File Prevalence To Inform Aggressiveness Of Behavioral Heuristics: Non-technical

This decision relates to an European patent application for a method for adjusting an aggressiveness level to use in behavior based heuristics malware detection.  Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 2386/16 (MALWARE DETECTION USING FILE PREVALENCE TO INFORM AGRESSIVENESS OF ... of 27.4.2021 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01:

Key takeaways

The invention

The invention concerns behavior based heuristics malware detection. Instead of using a static approach, the invention suggests to have varying dynamic measures to be applied to a file dependent on how likely the file is considered to be infected. The more likely a file is to contain malware, the stronger will be the measures. The "aggressiveness level" of the malware detection is dynamically adjusted based on the "prevalence rate" of a file such that lower prevalence files are treated more aggressively than higher