You’re sitting at your desk, drinking your morning coffee, surfing through your favorite news sites taking note of the interesting articles. You take another sip and set down your mug as you finish reading the latest update on local bank heist. Ding! You have a new email from you college buddy that you haven’t seen in a while. You read the subject line Party Pix! The title instantly brings a smile to your face. He’s always getting into funny predicaments and there’s always someone waiting in the wings with a camera. He’s never one to shy away from spotlight.
You open the email and notice there’s an attachment with the name YouMissedThis.jpg. Once again, someone is rubbing it in your face that their life is more fun than yours. You open the attachment. Nothing happens. You try again, clicking even harder this time. Still, nothing happens. There must be a problem with this stupid mouse! You highlight the file and then press the Enter key. Still nothing, Aggravated, you mutter something under your breath about the incompetent IT guys and close the email. Hopefully you’ll remember to open the file when you get home tonight. There’s work to be done.
After two solid hours of work, your fingers need a break. You drain the last drop from your mug and decide to go get a fresh cup. After stopping and exchanging pleasantries with a few co-workers you return to your desk, full mug in hand. A quick glance at your PC screen results in an instant rush of fear through your entire body. Red flashing boxes! Huge exclamation marks! The words WARNING, WARNING flashing across the screen. Every caution sign and warning symbol, save the skull and crossbones, has crossed in front of your eyes. There’s a new pop-up message! It’s from Microsoft! It’s telling you to Click Here to download a virus removal tool to help clean your PC. You anxiously follow the instruction. BAM! Your PC’s screen is now a beautiful shade of blue laced with tons of seemingly garbled, illegible white text. Your open, unsaved, spreadsheet is gone. It hits you with shear panic... you have a virus! Or do you…
After a few hours of tedious work by your IT guy, he informs you that you were infected with malware, or more specifically, scareware. He notices your perplexed look and tries to ease the confusion on your face. He rambles on and on using words like Viruses, Trojans, Worms, Malware, Scareware, Badware until you finally give up, thank him for his effort and send him on his way. What he was trying to relay to you will hopefully be better understood with this breakdown of the most common types of PC security threats and the different names given to them.
What is a Virus? A virus is a piece of software that, like its biological namesake, spends its entire life trying to replicate itself and make your life miserable. The malicious code will try to infect your files even going as far as trashing your master boot record to make your PC a zombie or kill it altogether. One of the key definitions of a true virus is that it needs human action to start the process. A virus can not initiate its program until you tell it to.
What is a Worm? A worm is a virus that has evolved, so to speak. Unlike a virus, a worm can start itself without you doing anything wrong. Like its virus predecessor, its goal in life is to replicate itself and ruin your day. Worms will seek out vulnerabilities in your computer network and replicate from computer to computer all by themselves. The most common entry point for a worm is through email and instant messaging programs.
What is a Trojan? Sometimes referred to as a Trojan horse, these programs appear to be something useful, and when launched, pretend do something desired on your screen. Like the people of Troy, you have no idea that something sinister is afoot. While you are watching the seemingly innocent slideshow of baby kittens, your PC is running illicit code that is harming your computer or stealing your information. Most Trojans are downloaded from free software or music sites and computer attachments that were unknowingly sent to you from a friend with a hacked email account.
What is Spyware? Unlike the threats mentioned above, spyware does not harm your computer in any way. Instead of attacking your PC, they attack you. These sneaky programs run on your PC with no apparent sign that they are even there. They search your computer for valuable information including passwords, credit card numbers and bank accounts. They can also secretly track every keystroke on your PC compiling the data and sending it off to an offshore database. Your personal information is now on the black-market being sold to the highest bidder.
What is Scareware? Probably the most profitable type of all of the security threats is scareware. These programs are usually silently downloaded from an infected website and launch themselves when programed to do so. They usually don’t do any harm to your PC but instead display fake warnings and error messages. Quick to follow these messages is an offer to download and install a removal tool that will make all of these risks disappear. You click the link to download the fix and you are asked to pay $59 for the software package. A lot of people will reluctantly pay the asking price, download the removal tool and feel relieved when all of the popups are gone. Thinking all is well, a few weeks down the road, the process start all over again. Your $59 bought a few weeks of relief. Until the program is completely removed by an IT professional the cycle will likely continue.
What is Malware? Malware stands for Malicious Software. Any program that is designed to exploit a computer or its user is officially malware. Malware is a generic term that covers all of the above threats, and more.
The computer world is a dark and scary place, to say the least. Using common sense and a good antivirus program you can eliminate a lot of the risk. Be careful what websites you visit, what email attachments you open and most importantly, have a good IT service desk on speed dial.
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