The Threats of Malware
Introduction
Along with viruses, one of the biggest threats to computer users on the Internet today is malware. It can hijack your browser, redirect your search attempts, serve up nasty pop-up ads, track what web sites you visit, and generally screw things up. Malware programs are usually poorly-programmed and can cause your computer to become unbearably slow and unstable in addition to all the other havoc they wreak.
Many of them will reinstall themselves even after you think you have removed them, or hide themselves deep within Windows, making them very difficult to clean. This guide will detail the different varieties of malware along with basic preventive measures. In a follow-up article, we will examine the removal process and review a set of spyware removers. Although also considered to be malware, programs such as viruses, worms, trojans, and everything else generally detected by anti-virus software will not be discussed here, and the use of the word malware will only explicitly refer to software that fits in the categories listed below.
You can get infected by malware in several ways. Malware often comes bundled with other programs (Kazaa, iMesh, and other file sharing programs seem to be the biggest bundlers). These malware programs usually pop-up ads, sending revenue from the ads to the program's authors. Others are installed from websites, pretending to be software needed to view the website. Still others, most notably some of the CoolWebSearch variants, install themselves through holes in Internet Explorer like a virus would, requiring you to do nothing but visit the wrong web page to get infected.
The vast majority, however, must be installed by the user. Unfortunately, getting infected with malware is usually much easier than getting rid of it, and once you get malware on your computer it tends to multiply.
Will anti-virus programs protect against malware?
Anti-virus companies are only beginning to pay attention to malware. Aside from some of the latest versions (many include the malware scanner in the Internet security portion of their suites), most anti-virus programs have little to no protection. Those anti-virus programs that do protect are generally not as thorough as a dedicated malware remover. However, some especially virulent malware that malware scanners may miss will be removed by anti-virus programs, so it is generally a good idea to run a virus scan as well. Some of the anti-virus vendors' delay may be caused by worries they will get sued if they start labeling programs spyware, adware, etc.
Bob is at the skate park, showing off his skills as a skateboarder. With one wrong move, he fell off of his skateboard, and his knee scrapped on the concrete, causing a big gash on his knee. A virus enters in the knee, and it has a mission. Its mission is to infect every organ in Bob's body.
After coming home from a long day at school, I turn on my computer and go to the Internet to see "What's New!" Then all of a sudden I hear, "You've Got Mail!" I check my e-mail and it's a message from my friend in Alabama. It is warning me about a computer virus that is being spread, and that I should watch out. Thank goodness someone warned me about this. I said to myself, "This kind of stuff must be the work of those hackers that I hear so much about." But what exactly is a hacker, and what are they out to do?
Imagine this; you are sitting at your desk looking at a bunch of pictures. Just a normal scene, what could go wrong? Suddenly, you’re attacked by deadly things that are trying to steal your personal information like your credit card numbers, email address, all your passwords, everything. Could this be the work of ninjas? No (bet that is what you first thought though). What about the FBI? No. Then what was it? It was a virus. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, you were looking at pictures online using Google images (for all you Bing fans, I’m sorry but Google is much better). You were downloading pictures from Google and one of them happened to contain a virus and it was downloaded with one of the pictures. How do I know this is a virus? The answer is that I don’t. I didn’t give enough symptoms to diagnose this. To the pros at hacking and security, you may know that viruses are not the only threat. If you are new to the world of computers, you might not. The three types of malware that will try to harm your PC or your data in any way are Trojans, worms, and the most famous, viruses. These three are very different and all are terrible for you and your PC.
...ies on other programs for it to continue to spread and often times the same program can be hit by the same virus several times. Cracking these codes and viruses is much harder to figure out. It’s almost like these virus writers make it a puzzle to solve before you can actually disband the virus itself. Even when the code is cracked and disassembled, writers normally just rewrite that code to do the exact same thing again.
Having first appeared in Russia in 2005, referred as Winlock, that successfully scammed over £10m from unsuspecting victims before the Russian authorities arrested 10 individuals for involvement in such hackings in 2010, however it hasn’t stop the growing number of the problem. With such profitable money to obtain, perpetrators have discovered new ways to spread the malware and to cash-in at the expense of victims.
In his article “The Undercover Parent” (2008) Harlan Coben informs parents on the dangers of the internet while persuading them to use spyware as a surveillance tool. Harlan Coben describes the problems that parents face and proceeds to state the benefits of spyware. The purpose of this article is to increase parent's awareness of their children's online world in order to promote online safety through the use of spyware. The intended audience for this article includes parents who are uncertain of their children’s online use. The author shares a relationship with these parents because he is a fellow adult and understands the worries and fears of parents. Parents should not use spyware to monitor their children because it is overprotective and intrusive, counterintuitive for leaning, and does not promote trust between teens and their parents.
Computers are main technological features that allow criminals to step into unsuspecting victims lives. With a simple piggy-backing program hackers are able to track every keystroke made by the victim. One such program is called spyware, not to be confused with adware, which is often referred to interchangeably with spyware, but is potentially harmless (Louis 15). Spyware, hidden within downloaded software, implants itself deep within a computer’s hard drive, allowing it to track every move made by the user (Louis 16). Once inside a system, spyware can gather e-mail addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers.
White-collar crime, specifically computer crime, is becoming more popular as computers become more readily available. Crimes using computers and crimes against computers are usually committed without fear of being caught, due to the detachment of the offender from the victim.
“ Prevention is better than cure ”, if computer users are aware of Malware attacks, they may prevent those attacks . So, in this research paper i am going to focus on Malware and Protecting Against Malware.
Today in present, with the improvements in technology and science new concepts are integrated in our lives. Cyber crime is among those concepts that did not exist 15 to 20 years ago. In the old days only conventional crime was discussed, which refers to those traditional, illegal behaviors that most people think of as crime. In today one has to be careful not only against conventional crime but also cybercrime also known as “faceless crime” it’s the latest and the most complicated problem in the new century. Cybercrime consists of all criminal actions against communication devices in a network such as Internet, telephone lines or mobile network. Cyber crime can be observed among people at various age groups as it is easier to commit compared to other types of crime like murder, kidnapping or human trafficking.
Malicious code, also known as malware, installed on a computer provides an attacker with the control over this machine. Therefore, malware can be defined as “a set of instructions that run on your computer and make your system do something that an attacker wants to do”. It is more common to see malicious code to be implemented in binary executable files. However, it can be implemented in almost any computer language. Attackers have used a huge number of scripting languages, word processing macro languages and a h...
Marshall, KP & Swartwout, N 2006 “Marketing and Internet Professionals' Fiduciary Responsibility: A Perspective on Spyware..” Journal of Internet Commerce, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 109–126. (online EBSCOHOST)
Virus is one of the most common malware. Unlike spyware, virus is largely designed to harm useful programs or wreck down an entire operating system. There are many ways through which virus may enter a computer. The most common way is via email attachments. A...
In today’s days malware is designated as a software which aims to disturb a computer with the consent or permission of the owner. This term “Malware” is used by computer professionals to describe a varied forms of destructive, annoying and intrusive software code. This word “Malware” is used to indicate all types of malware which include a true set of viruses.
...h the threat of “Mobile Malware” looming in the air, the desire to give the general public fair warning has never been greater. This paper was intended to provided that knowledge the general public needs and will reinforce the topic to those who were already aware. The history of malware gave you a look into the not so distant past. The discussion of technical examples of malware was intended to show you how rapidly the threat is developing along with the statistics of malware’s current expansion, and the future examples of malware and research showed you concepts that were unimaginable to the common electronic consumer. The majority of malware was originally designed to be a practical joke, but as we can see from the ever growing desire for malicious intent, the evolution of malware has followed suite. We can only hope that the growing need for security can be met.