Guide to Malware

In a recent article, I explained how to keep your computer maintained and running fast. This was prompted by my work on a relatives computer. The complaint was that he could no longer get on the internet; what I found was that he had 187 computer viruses on his computer. This was the worst case of computer viruses I'd personally handled in my IT career. I realized that many people just aren't aware of the threats out there. So I decided to share.

Malware is the common name for malicious software. It is a variety of intrusive, annoying, sometimes even hostile software or program code and is designed to damage your computer without your knowledge or consent. Malware includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware and primarily infiltrates your computer via the Internet or email. It hijacks your web browser, serves nasty pop up advertisements, tracks what web sites you visit, redirects search attempts, and wreaks havoc on your computer system. According to Wikipedia(1), F-Secure reported that as much malware was produced in 2007 as in the previous 20 years altogether. This is obviously a problem getting out of control.

I was asked by another family member why people do this. I guess it may be easier to understand the risk if you know the intent. In the early days of computers, these programs were written as harmless pranks or experiments and were primarily young programmers experimenting. The Melissa virus that was widespread in 1999 was originally written as a prank.

Within a few short years of that, malware has now taken a turn for the worse and is primarily written for profit. But how could people make money off of harmful software? Well, malware can be written to take control of your computer and use it for black market exploitation. Infected computers are commonly referred to as zombie computers and are used to send spam emails, host contraband information like child pornography, or distribute denial-of-service attacks.

A denial-of-service attack is a form of extortion where attackers keep legitimate users of a service from using that service. For example, if your bank received a denial-of-service attack, that would mean there were several, maybe thousands, of zombie computers communicating with your bank at one time for illegitimate reasons causing it to slow down or not be able to respond to legitimate communication. It also eats up the bandwidth which could cause the entire network to stop responding and could cause entire geographical areas to be compromised. Could you imagine coming home from work on Friday and you go to get online to pay your bills and you have no Internet? Society in general has become pretty dependent upon the Internet. This could potentially cause widespread panic.

Malware is difficult to clean as it embeds itself deep within Windows so that it's hard to find and sometimes it will reinstall itself after you remove it. Malware tends to multiply once you get it on your computer and it's easier to get it than to get rid of it. Many antivirus companies are starting to include malware utilities to help you clean up malware on your computer but to get the most thorough results, you should have a malware program specifically dedicated to removing malware.

The most common types of malware are toolbars, hijackers, adware, spyware, and dialers. Toolbars are common because they attempt to emulate the Google and Yahoo toolbars' functionality so that you the user think they are helping you out. And while they may give you cool tools such as a search form or a pop up blocker, what you don't see is that they are tracking the websites you visit so they can target what pop up advertisements to send you or they are allowing spyware to record your keystrokes so they can send your bank account number to a black market company. Scary huh?

Hijackers may take over your home page on the Internet or search pages and redirect you to their own websites or prevent you from going to websites they don't want you going to like malware removal sites. This can be extremely frustrating when trying to surf the Internet or even fix the computer problems.

Adware is advertisement software that puts advertisements on your computer: pop ups, pop unders, some even put ads on top of legitimate ads on web sites. They don't need to have Internet Explorer to open and sometimes will pop up when you're not even online. This is a sure fire way to tell you have adware installed somehow. A relative recently brought me his computer after he was working with his father in law on his computer showing him something for his business and a porn pop up came up. How embarrassing.

Spyware may be the biggest threat. It sends information about you and your computer out to third parties. Common examples are sending your email contacts out to a spammer that can now send spam to all of your contacts. They could also record your name, usernames, password, credit card numbers, phone number and address. Identity theft is easier than ever these days.

Dialers set your modem to connect to a 900 number which will charge your phone bill and make hundreds of dollars in profit for the owner of the 900 number. This is a bid older now that many people have moved away from dial up, but they do still exist and it's important to keep yourself protected from these things happening.

Unfortunately there are many malware removal programs that are actually malware themselves. So while you think you're installing this program to protect you from the problem, you're actually making the problem worse. So be sure to do your homework and research the program before deciding to download and install it. Keep in mind that most malware is installed unknowingly by the user as it is embedded to seemingly legitimate programs.

In my next article, I will provide the best steps to protect yourselves out there from these threats. In the meantime, keep your information safe!(1)Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware