US Patent 8997233 Detecting script-based malware using emulation and heuristics

The subject disclosure is directed towards running script through a malware detection system including an emulator environment to detect any malware within the script. Statistics are collected as part of processing the script, with parameterized heuristic analysis used to determine whether to run the emulation. The processing through the malware detection system may be iterative, to de-obfuscate layers of obfuscated malware. The emulator may be updated via signatures.