All too often, businesses are exposed to and infected by e-contaminations of various makes and models; however more often than not, IT Managers and general user population do not clearly understand what these infections are and their significance, which should be addressed as priorities. To that end, I have created this definition list and will expand on this post soon.
Look out for future posts highlighting the most common ways that these infections make their way into corporate and home IT systems.
Malware
Malware is short for malicious software.
It infiltrates a computer system without the owners/victims consent.
Motivation: The motivation behind malware creators is usually to annoy users, and to cause damage to or document user information for predominantly malicious reasons such as identity theft, fraudulent activity etc.
Some examples of malware include but are not constricted to computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses.
Facts: As much malware was created in 2007 as in the previous 20 years altogether.
People shouldn’t confuse malware with faulty software, which although is entirely legitimate, may also be flawed or damaged, possibly harming the computer system without actually having any malevolent intention and or exposing your systems to vulnerabilities (i.e. Windows XP)
History: Malware was originally intended for the soul purposes of annoying users, and for the creators to simply “spread their coding wings”; it was at one point, created and spread by individuals who wanted to test their skills and flaunt their abilities to the underground community. Since then, malware creation has evolved into a professional black market money making machine with profit as the main motive.
Spyware
Spyware is the term referred to software that relays the information found on an infected computer (such as account details, passwords, user surfing habits etc.) back to the softwares creator.
Motivation: Spyware gives its creator the power to install additional harmful applications onto the victims system, which can cause the computer to run slow and/or change any number of settings on the computer that compromise a users privacy.
Facts: Spyware gets transferred onto a system through deceptive tactics employed by malicious websites. What appears to be a desirable program to download may have spyware attached to it so that once a user downloads the program, they are oblivious to the spyware that is being downloaded alongside it.
Another method of deception is the use of rogue anti-spyware programs, which act as legitimate anti-spyware programs, but are in actual fact, spyware themselves. These rogue programs use scare tactics to trick the un-informed user into downloading their tainted product.
Spyware often installs keyloggers and backdoors that silently collect information and feed it back to central servers; this information is used by organised crime-rings for identify theft, credit card numbers and various other electronic schemes.
Adware
Adware can be described as any software application which actively advertises a company's goods and services, be it in a relevant, innocent way or by more intrusive and annoying methods.
Although adware can be harmless like advertising a legitimate and relevant company at the start-up for games (Activision, NVIDIA etc.), there are spyware programs that use popups and other annoying tactics as a means to advertise a product for the reason that there is a small possibility that the infected user could actually click on the popup advertisement and make a sale.
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