About Phileas

Waging War Against Spyware

Developed to automate the search and discovery of new spyware, Phileas consists of dozens of servers arrayed in a data center. Each server hosts one or more "bots" that scour the Web for Web sites that contain spyware.

Bots search each site, revealing pages with characteristics of exploits or suspicious application code or suspected new spyware threats. Innovative, pattern-matching technologies allow Phileas to identify known and unknown exploits, plus any changes to existing spyware variants. New URL targets identified by Phileas are sent to Webroot for processing and evaluation.

The Webroot Threat Research team uses proprietary algorithms to create definitions for each new spyware signature or variant, which go through an extensive quality assurance process before being released to customers.

Comprehensive Spyware Trends

Through the extensive statistics and information collected by Phileas, Webroot gains an ever-increasing view of the entire Internet and new spyware trends.

Phileas is currently collecting information related to:

• Types of spyware that exist on the Internet
• Exploits used to distribute spyware
• Prevalence of different types of spyware generally on the Internet
• Geographic locations where spyware originated
• Specific Web sites that are known to distribute spyware

Phileas scans the web searching for new spyware threats.

Use Webroot's comprehensive database to see if your PC is infected with a free spyware scan.