Method and system for adaptive rule-based content scanners

A method for scanning content (200), including identifying tokens within an incoming byte stream (210), the tokens being lexical constructs for a specific language, identifying patterns of tokens, generating a parse tree from the identified patterns of tokens (220), and identifying the presence of potential exploits within the parse tree, wherein said identifying tokens, identifying patterns of tokens, and identifying the presence of potential exploits are based upon a set of rules for the specific language. A system and a computer readable storage medium are also described and claimed.