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Understanding different types of Malware
06-22-2010, 04:27 PM
Post: #1
Understanding different types of Malware
It is said that the the best way to defeat your enemy is to understand him. Be informed about what malware is and in how many forms it exists.

What is malware? Malware is exactly what its name implies: mal (meaning bad, in the sense of malignant or malicious rather than just poorly done) + ware (short for software). More specifically, malware is software that does not benefit the computer's owner, and may even harm it, and so is purely parasitic. Malwares is a broad term and may imply any program with malicious intentions. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware, and other malicious and unwanted software.

Virus is a program that mainly focuses on causing damage to computer though there some viruses are just made to play pranks. They usually do not cause damage. Just like biological viruses, a software virus has the ability to replicate itself and spread quickly.

Trojan or trojan horse is a program which is used to gain access to a computer by installing a program on infected PC to open some backdoor. Arguably the most dangerous kind of malware, at least from a social standpoint. While Trojans rarely destroy computers or even files, that's only because they have bigger targets: your financial information, your computer's system resources, and sometimes even massive denial-of-service attack launched by having thousands of computers all try to connect to a web server at the same time.

Worm is a program which infects the computers which are connected by some network. Worms slow down the network. Worm are notorious in the way that they try to infect your email communication channels and spread itself to your contact list.

Backdoors Backdoors are much the same as Trojans or worms, except that they do something different: they open a "backdoor" onto a computer, providing a network connection for hackers or other malware to enter or for viruses or sp@m to be sent out through.

Keyloggers No prïze for guessing what this software does: yes, it logs your keystrokes, i.e., what you type. Typically, the malware kind of keyloggers (as opposed to keyloggers deliberately installed by their owners to use in diagnosing computer problems) are out to log sensitive information such as passwords and financial details.

Spyware monitor/Log the activity performed on a computer. These are used to spy on some one either for legal or illegal perpose. Example: Keylogger applications. Spyware usually phone their creater to pass information they were created to gather on infected machine.

Adware are the programs which delivers ads to your computer (generally in POP-UP's form). They consume your network bandwidth and slow it down.

Rootkit The malware most likely to have a human touch, rootkits are installed by crackers (bad hackers) on other people's computers. The rootkit is designed to camouflage itself in a system's core processes so as to go undetected. It is the hardest of all malware to detect and therefore to remöve; many experts recommend completely wiping your hard drive and reinstalling everything fresh.

Wabbits According to Wikipedia, wabbits are in fact rare, and it's not hard to see why: they don't do anything to spread to other machines. A wabbit, like a virus, replicates itself, but it does not have any instructions to email itself or pass itself through a computer network in order to infect other machines. The least ambitious of all malware, it is content simply to focus on utterly devastating a single machine.
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07-20-2010, 05:21 PM
Post: #2
RE: Understanding different types of Malware
Nice article. Many people run more than one virus scanner for added protection; in the case of TruPrevent for example Panda actually recommended that people use it to bolster their current solution. It is rare that virus scanners interfere with each other these days
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11-18-2010, 01:00 AM (This post was last modified: 11-18-2010 01:01 AM by Allegramata.)
Post: #3
Star RE: Understanding different types of Malware
Hay, this is a good account about malware, which indeed is a problem. It is becoming more or less a mafia affecting the world’s ever growing computer literate population. It is a destructive way of earning money that hampers ethics and moral contentment in the modern world full of far-fetched people that would do anything for money.

Do you know the so called “malware capital” in the world? Well it is said to be Shaoxing, a Chinese city.

World famous author Dan Brown describes beautifully what a worm can really do to a system in his book “The digital fortress”. I think the general public should be aware of different types of malware in order to combat this growing concern.
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01-28-2011, 06:31 PM
Post: #4
RE: Understanding different types of Malware
Thanks its very nice post!!
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