The term malware is thrown around frequently, but most people don’t have a good handle on what exactly malware is. The word is actually a mash-up of the malicious software. This means malware is simply any software written with the intent to do bad things.
There are many different types of malware, including, but not limited to, viruses, worms, ransomware, scareware, and spyware. They each function differently and do different things to your system.
We will start with viruses believed to be the earliest form of malware. They predate the term malware. The first viruses were written as proof-of-concept programs to see if computer programs could perform certain harmful, or potentially harmful, tasks. While popular viruses these days are very complex and hundreds of lines of code, an effective virus can be written in NotePad in as little as 10 lines of code. The necessary ingredients for a program to be called a virus are bad intent and the ability to self-replicate. Some type of human intervention is needed for the virus to be deployed. This may be the user clicking on a link or opening a file, that sort of action. Worms are able to self-replicate without a human taking any action.
Ransomware seems to be in the news almost daily. Sadly, there are far more cases of ransomware that go unreported. Ransomware is malicious software that denies access to a system and/or data until the demanded sum of money is paid. Many ransomware attacks are on small businesses and organizations, not just the multimillion dollar corporations whose attacks make headlines.
Scareware is newer on the scene, but the scam is an old one: send people a notice (or email) that frightens them into acting. As with many scams, a sense of urgency leads people to take the requested action before taking the time to look into the situation.
Spyware, as the name suggests, is any software installed and run for the purpose of collecting information on a computer and/or its user. It can come in different forms including keyloggers, system monitors (microphone and camera), web beacons, and modem hijackers, among others.
Now that you are thoroughly terrified of going online, we’ll look at some ways to avoid all this trouble. First and foremost, use anti-virus (AV) software. It is often called anti-malware (AM) these days given that it does address more than just viruses. Many people are in the habit of calling it AV, but generally it refers to AM. This is software specifically written to identify, locate, and eliminate malware. It is not enough to install it on your system, you must activate it. It also needs to be updated on a regular basis to add any new malware fixes to it. Most AM has a setting for allowing auto-updates. I strongly recommend using it. I am not a big fan of auto-updates on my software. I prefer to read through what is being updated and determining if I want those changes. With AM, I always want the updates as soon as I can get them. It keeps my system safer that way.
Join me tomorrow to find out how I was almost scammed out of hundreds by an online ad.
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