Patent 7984304 was granted and assigned to VMware on July, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Computer-executable instructions in a computer are verified dynamically, after they have been identified for submission for execution, but before they are actually executed. In particular, for at least one current instruction that has been identified for submission to the processor for execution, an identifying value, for example, a hash value, is determined for a current memory block that contains the current instruction. The identifying value of the current memory block is then compared with a set of reference values. If the identifying value satisfies a validation condition, then execution of the current instruction by the processor is allowed. If the validation condition is not satisfied, then a response is generated: In the common case, execution of the current instruction is not allowed, or some other predetermined measure is taken.