BACKGROUND

With Internet use forming an ever greater part of day to day life, security exploits that steal or destroy system resources, data, and private information are an increasing problem. Governments and businesses devote significant resources to preventing intrusions and thefts related to these security exploits. Security exploits come in many forms, such as computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, keystroke loggers, adware, and rootkits. These exploits are delivered in or through a number of mechanisms, such as spearfish emails, clickable links, documents, executables, or archives. Some of the threats posed by security exploits are of such significance that they are described as cyber terrorism or industrial espionage.

Many security software solutions, such as anti-virus software, have been developed to combat these security exploits. These security software solutions require maintenance, such as updates and patches, and to apply these updates and patches, the computing devices implementing the security software solutions must usually reboot. During the reboot, the security software solutions may not be active, providing an opportunity for security exploits to gain control of the computing devices. Even while the security software solutions are running, security exploits may subvert the security software solutions in any number of ways, such as killing or corrupting the security software solutions.

