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.
At the Aim Higher College there have been recently discovered malware on the campus systems that are due to many recent attacks. I used an Anti-virus protection software called AVG on the computer systems on campus and ran a whole computer scan. The results came back very quick of numbers of malware being high and medium priorities that these should not be taken lightly. Furthermore, the scan found many viruses, Trojans, and malicious software and applications.
To get through these security walls “cybercrooks” are creating more and more different types of malware. What is malware? Microsoft defines it as the following “Malware is sho...
Trojans are a type of program that can and usually will hurt a PC through software and hardware. The way it gets into the computer is by fooling the computer user into thinking that some software he/she found online is safe. When the person downloads the software, it is not actually useful software. It is actually a Trojan which has now invaded the PC. Once in, it allows the creator of the Trojan to access and control the computer from his own house. The hacker can then access passwords, important documents, and other stuff that will be mentioned later. The malware does not make ...
Malware could be defined as several different objects such as worms, viruses, Trojans, or blended, so I’m going to compare malware to a car manufacturer. There are countless models that a car manufacturer makes, so it would be difficult to distinctly describe, Ford as solely a truck or sedan company. We know manufactures make several types of different vehicles. Let’s get back to malware and let me give you an example.
I should start by saying that not every system oddity is due to a virus, worm, or bot. Is your system slowing down? Is your hard drive filling up rapidly? Are programs crashing without warning? These symptoms are more likely caused by Windows, or badly written legitimate programs, rather than malware. After all, people who write malware want to hide their program's presence. People who write commercial software put icons all over your desktop. Who's going to work harder to go unnoticed?
Spyware had been titled the largest threat to the internet since spam. The scary thing is, unlike spam, spyware is not always visible to detect and able to be recognized. "Spyware appears to be a new and rapidly growing practice that poses a risk of serious harm to consumers," (qtd. by FTC, 2004 in Sipior). A study showed that in 91 percent of personal computers are infected (Sipior). That percentage has done nothing but increased in the two year time period since 2003. In 2004 EarthLink audited 3.2 million personal computers and found 83.4 million traces of adware cookies (Sipior). Just imagine how many are circulating in every computer audited without the user knowing what is going on with their computer.
The World Wide Web has become a catalyst for hackers, organize criminals, insider threats, political, social action groups, and anonymous groups to excite fear on individuals, private and the public sector. These threat actors can launch malware, rootkits, spam, botnets and a host of other threat vectors at any occasion.
Computer as a target means just what it sounds like. The computer system is infected or taken over by software that is intended to do harm to the device. These harmful software or malware attacks on computers can involve viruses, worms, Dos attacks, and hacking (Hess, Orthmann, Cho, 2017, pg. 547). Worms can be even more harmful than most of the others. Most people know that to get a virus you need to click some sort of link or take some type of action with the computer to get one. With worms however all they need is an open door, a network connection, and it will be able to infect many machines connected to the network and damage it unlike a virus that harms a targeted computer (Hess, Orthmann, Cho, 2017, pg.547). Many people in today’s society may be familiar with how harmful these malwares can be they may not know why cyber criminals choose to use them. One of the main reasons is extortion of companies. They do this by “threatening to or actually damaging the company’s computers, network, or web presence” (Hess, Orthmann, Cho, 2017, pg.548). By threatening companies to hack or infect their systems this way they are to extort large sums of money out of these
Actually, most Internet issues such as spam messages assaults have malware as their fundamental cause. Today, malware is used by both developers and governments, to take singular, cash related, or business information. Malware is used broadly against government or corporate destinations to assemble watched data. Regardless, malware is consistently used against individuals to get information, for instance, individual unmistakable evidence numbers or purposes of premium, bank or charge card numbers, and passwords. Left unguarded, individual and masterminded PCs can be at noteworthy risk against these dangers. Since the climb of extensive broadband Internet access, programming has more a significant part of the time been proposed for advantage. Some malware is used to make money by snap misrepresentation, making it give the PC customer has clicked an advancing join on a site, creating a portion from the promoter. It was evaluated in 2012 that around 60 to 70% of all element malware used some kind of snap misrepresentation, and 22% of all ad-clicks were fraudulent. Malware is typically used for criminal purposes, yet can be used for damage, frequently without direct benefit to the perpetrators. (Kolbitsch, Comparetti, Kruegel, Kirda, Zhou, & Wang, 2016)"Malware" is the general term covering all the distinctive sorts of dangers to client PC wellbeing, some classifications of malware are first, virus, software that can recreate it and spread to different PCs or are modified to harm a PC by erasing records, reformatting the hard circle, or spending PC memory. Secondly, adhere, software that is monetarily upheld by showing promotion when clients associated with the Internet. Third, spyware, software that surreptitiously accumulates data and transmits it
Malicious software in short known as Malware. It is also known as computer Contaminant. Similar to biological parasite, malware also reside in a Host. Malware will get installed on host without user’s consent. Generally a software is considered malware based on the intent of the creator...
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.
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...
According to CloudEight Security Tips, Spyware and adware are the number one threat to computer users (“Say” 1). Computer users whose computer system or internet connection is slower than normal are a victim of this threat. According to Wikipedia, spyware is any piece of software that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge (Spyware 1). They have also defined malware, a piece of software intended to do harm to a computer, as a classification of spyware. These types of software will unnecessarily load ads, websites you didn’t intend to visit, or collect information thus slowing down your computer system or internet connection. It’s time to search and destroy these little pieces of software off of your computer.
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.
In the modern world of technology, many of us still consider being hacked a rare issue we will not have to encounter in our lifetime. The unfortunate truth is that everyone who uses a computer or cell phone is at a high risk of being hacked. In a post by Information Security, they reveal, “Three out of four Americans will be a victim of cyber-crime” (Goldberg 1). Cybercrime is defined as a crime conducted via the internet or some other computer network. The frightening high statistics of being a victim of cybercrime makes me ask the question, what can we do to protect ourselves more efficiently against cyber intuitions?