People use the term “virus” for any piece of software that causes harm to their computers. Nevertheless, a computer virus is only one form of harmful software among many others which are purposely fabricated to disrupt computers or computer networks. Other types of harmful software include worms, trojans, spyware, adware, etc. Malicious Software or Malware for short, is the common term used to define all these harmful software.
Malware can destroy your data in computers, shut down networks/services by creating enormous amount of data traffic, or steal your confidential information which may result in considerable amount of losses both in terms of time and money. Even worse, you may not be able to recover the systems back to the original condition resulting in a permanent loss of your valuable data.
In order to protect your computers from these malware you need to get some basic understanding on the behavior of each type and possible defensive mechanisms.
Viruses
A malware can be called as a virus only when if it fulfills the following three (3) requirements.
It should have the capability to cause harm to a computer or its information
It propagates with the support of another file (host file)
* It can add or send its replica to selected targets Worms
A worm is a self propagating malicious piece of software. It uses the network connections of the infected computers or services such as email to propagate and infect other computers. Worms do not need a host file to propagate as in the case of a virus.
Continue reading "Using buffers against malware"
Posted by Justin Payton
in Adware, Spyware and Trojans
at
16:11
