Robot Genius Spyberus

Malware has blossomed from an adolescent power trip to a business in its own right whose specialty is harvesting passwords, credit card numbers, and valuable documents. Today’s malware even repairs itself if partially removed, and downloads updates on a regular basis to keep one step ahead of any would-be defenders. Traditional anti-malware solutions are strong against known threats, but particularly weak against emerging, unknown and zero-day threats.

Spyberus: Fast, Effective Defense Against Malware

Introducing Spyberus: an anti-malware desktop security client that uses a unique behavior-based approach to malware detection.  The Spyberus client does not rely on the use of “scanning engines” and signatures to detect malware and protect users against malicious threats.  Instead, it tracks all newly installed programs by monitoring file activity and all writes to the hard drive. 

Leveraging the Robot Genius lightweight browser plug-in, RGguard, Spyberus can even determine whether a URL points to malware before the point of download and infection, and warn users to steer clear. Spyberus Enterprise Edition’s management interface gives IT administrators remote control of individual client installations, enabling IT staff to enforce rules and restrict the downloading and installation of unauthorized software. In this way, Spyberus protects users and the network against malware attacks, managing containment, and speeding remediation.

Key Benefits

  • Protects against new or unknown zero-day threats by warning about or blocking URLs that contain malware.
  • Creates a “virtual sandbox” to monitor all programs installed by tracking
    all file activity and all writes to hard drive.
  • Automatically detects malicious programs.
  • Remediates all types of malware programs with a greater than 99 percent success rate.
  • Fully compatible with and enhances existing antivirus software and other
  • security programs.
  • Virtually no impact on system performance or resources.
  • Immediate protection out-of-the-box, no complicated setup.

Spyberus screenshot

How It Works

The Spyberus client does not rely on signatures to protect users’ PCs from malware.  Instead, it first creates a “virtual sandbox” for tracking newly installed programs, monitoring all programs installed by tracking file activity and all writes to hard drive. 
Then, it applies defined behavioral characteristics of malware to intelligently and proactively analyze programs, hunting down and paralyzing any activity or behavior that might compromise the security of a PC.

The core technology resides at the driver level. It creates a program activity history database that stores exact URLs where software was downloaded, enabling the tracing back of malware to its original web site—even stealth installs. Spyberus can sort installs by time, date and name, as well as identify installed programs that do not elect to register themselves. As a result, when a questionable or malicious program needs uninstalling, the Spyberus client can locate and ensure that every file and registry entry is purged completely.

Spyberus also uses Take Control, a powerful remediation tool. Should malware invade a user’s PC and start hijacking processes, the user can activate the Take Control feature to stop the malware-hijacked processes and bring the system back under user control. Using this feature, a single mouse click can purge even the most compromised system of the effects of malware so full remediation can begin.

Spyberus diagram

Spyberus Applications

Spyberus has three typical applications.PC Manufacturers  can add the Spyberus client on new PCs to provide customers the advantage of the best anti-malware protection available on the market. Spyberus complements PC manufacturers’ current security desktop solutions offerings and allows potential add-on revenue for upsell of the Spyberus software.PC Repair Service Vendors provide technicians with a way to cleanup inflected PCs faster, while creating a selling opportunity for the Spyberus client after cleanup is complete to ensure that the PC will not be infected again. And Desktop Security Software Solution Providers use the Spyberus anti-malware solution to complement and enhance their current antivirus or anti-malware solutions.

A Comprehensive Solution

Combined with the Robot Genius RGcrawler data and RGguard products, Spyberus provides comprehensive protection against all forms of malware. Spyberus is used everyday in the lab on test bed machines to test all the downloaded executables on the Internet, which make up the RGcrawler data.