Patent attributes
A system and method for detecting malicious activity within a Portable Document Format (PDF) document. The system includes a parser and one or more virtual machines. The parser that, when executed by a hardware processor, examines one or more portions of the PDF document to determine if one or more suspicious characteristics indicative of malicious network content are included in the one or more examined portions of the PDF document. The examined portion(s) in total are less than an entirety of the PDF document. The virtual machine(s) are adapted to receive the PDF document in response to the one or more examined portions of the PDF document being determined to include one or more suspicious characteristics indicative of malicious network content. The virtual machine(s) to process at least the one or more examined portions of the PDF document so as to determine whether the PDF document includes malicious network content.