Patent ID: 8533778

Claim:
A method to detect unwanted effects from the performance of a requested act, comprising: intercepting, by a first computer providing a virtual machine environment, a first request to perform an act at a target computer, the first computer comprising a hardware processor; performing the requested act within the virtual machine environment; monitoring the performed act to identify an effect; intercepting, by the first computer, one or more additional requests to perform a second act at a second target computer; performing the one or more additional requested acts within the virtual machine environment; identifying an unwanted effect based on performing the one or more additional requests to perform the second act within the virtual machine environment; attempting to identify a specific request from the one or more additional requests that resulted in the unwanted effect by associating a timing of the specific request and the identified unwanted based upon known correlations between request types and unwanted effects; identifying a time period between a last clean state of the virtual machine environment and the unwanted effect when the specific request that resulted in the unwanted effect cannot be identified; blocking all requests of the one or more additional requests intercepted during the identified time period; and forwarding the first request to perform the act to the target computer when the identified effect is not an unwanted effect.