Patent ID: 6952776

Claim:
A computer program embodied on a computer-readable medium for providing a virus detection program subsystem, comprising: a code segment that at least maintains an object-state database comprised of stored object information that is descriptive of a state of at least one object that is subject to infection by a computer virus and that reflects the state of said object as it existed at a point in the past; a virus detecting code segment that at least maintains a virus-detection database comprised of virus-detection information used in programmatically examining objects for the presence of various computer viruses; and an examination code segment, which, for a current scan of said object that is indicated as having a current state that is described by the stored object information, determines whether or not said object appears to have changed since said point in the past; and which, in the case that said object does not appear to have changed since said point in the past, but said virus-detection database does appear to have changed since said point in the past, programmatically examines said object for a presence of a computer virus while making use of the stored object information during the examination.