Patent ID: 8402539

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for detecting malware, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing system comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: receiving a request to determine whether a connection from a client device to a server is being blocked; attempting to connect to the server from a kernel mode of the client device, the kernel mode of the client device providing kernel-level privileges to resources of the client device; determining that the client device successfully connected to the server from the kernel mode; attempting to connect to the server from a user mode of the client device, the user mode of the client device providing user-level privileges to the resources of the client device, the user-level privileges being more limited than the kernel-level privileges; determining that the client device did not successfully connect to the server from the user mode; determining, based on the client device successfully connecting to the server from the kernel mode and failing to connect to the server from the user mode, that malware is blocking the connection from the client device to the server; in response to determining that the malware is blocking the connection from the client device to the server, performing at least one security action.