Patent ID: 8578477

Claim:
A method of performing a system integrity check of a computer, the method to be performed by the computer and comprising: determining whether a basic input/output system (BIOS) of the computer supports the system integrity check and alerting a user of the computer when the BIOS does not support the system integrity check; sending a command from a system integrity check application program operating in user mode to a secure driver operating in kernel mode, the command being to read requested data from a hardware component of the computer; in response to receiving the command in the secure driver, triggering a system management interrupt (SMI) to transfer program execution to an SMI handler, the location of the SMI handler in memory being dictated by the BIOS; using the SMI handler to read the requested data from the hardware component of the computer, to encrypt the requested data, and to store the encrypted requested data in a data transfer buffer; the secure driver reading the encrypted requested data from the data transfer buffer; and the system integrity check application program receiving the encrypted requested data from the secure driver, decrypting the encrypted requested data in user mode, and determining if the SMI handler successfully executed by analyzing the requested data in user mode for a predetermined verification code.