Patent ID: 8214902
Filing Date: 2012-07-03
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus comprising: circuitry to be comprised in a host, the host including a host processor and memory, the host processor being to execute an operating system, the circuitry being to determine, independently of the operating system and the host processor, authenticity of signature list information, the circuitry being to determine the authenticity based at least in part upon authentication information received by the circuitry from a remote server, the circuitry also being to determine, independently of the operating system and the host processor, based at least in part upon comparison of at least one portion of the signature list information with at least one portion of contents of the memory, whether at least one of authorized data and malicious data is present in the at least one portion of the contents of the memory, the circuitry comprising a finite state machine, the finite state machine comprising a flip-flop to receive, during a clock transition, next state information that is to be supplied to a decoder during a succeeding clock transition as current state information, the finite state machine comprising the decoder, the next state information representing a next state of the finite state machine, the current state information representing a current state of the finite state machine.