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Security Operations · Foundational

Signature-Based Detection

Detecting threats by matching known patterns, such as file hashes or byte sequences, against a database of signatures.

Definition

Signature detection is accurate and fast for known threats with low false positives, but cannot detect new or modified malware. It is used by traditional antivirus and IDS/IPS rules. Signatures must be updated continually.

Example

An IDS rule matching a specific exploit payload string.

Exam tip

Signature-based cannot detect zero-days or polymorphic malware.

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