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What is Malware?
 Malware,
short for malicious software, consists of programming
(code, scripts, active content, and other software) that is
designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information
that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain
unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise
exhibits abusive behavior. The expression is a general term
used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of
hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.
Software is
considered to be malware based on the perceived intent of
the creator rather than any particular features. Malware
includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware,
dishonest adware, scareware, crimeware, most rootkits, and
other malicious and unwanted software or program. In law,
malware is sometimes known as a computer contaminant,
for instance in the legal codes of several U.S. states,
including California and West Virginia.
Preliminary results
from Symantec published in 2008 suggested that "the release
rate of malicious code and other unwanted programs may be
exceeding that of legitimate software applications."
According to F-Secure, "As much malware [was] produced in
2007 as in the previous 20 years altogether." Malware's most
common pathway from criminals to users is through the
Internet: primarily by e-mail and the World Wide Web.
The prevalence of malware
as a vehicle for organized Internet crime, along with the
general inability of traditional anti-malware protection
platforms (products) to protect against the continuous
stream of unique and newly produced malware, has seen the
adoption of a new mindset for businesses operating on the
Internet: the acknowledgment that some sizable percentage of
Internet customers will always be infected for some reason
or another, and that they need to continue doing business
with infected customers. The result is a greater emphasis on
back-office systems designed to spot fraudulent activities
associated with advanced malware operating on customers'
computers.
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"Microsoft reported in May
2011 that every one in 14 downloads from the Internet may
now contain malware code, according to the Wall Street
Journal.
Social media, and Facebook in particular, is seeing
a rise in new tactics for spreading harm to computers." |
Malware is not the same as defective
software, that is, software that has a legitimate purpose but contains
harmful bugs. Sometimes, malware is disguised as genuine software, and
may come from an official site. Therefore, some security programs, such
as McAfee may call malware "potentially unwanted programs" or "PUP".
Though a computer virus is malware that can reproduce itself, the term
is often used erroneously to refer to the entire category.
Malware vs Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware
(malicious software) installed on computers that collects
information about users without their knowledge. The
presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user and
can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly
installed on the user's personal computer. Sometimes,
however, spywares such as keyloggers are installed by the
owner of a shared, corporate, or public computer on purpose
in order to secretly monitor other users.
While the
term spyware suggests software that
secretly monitors the user's computing, the functions of
spyware extend well beyond simple monitoring. Spyware
programs can collect various types of personal information,
such as Internet surfing habits and sites that have been
visited, but can also interfere with user control of the
computer in other ways, such as installing additional
software and redirecting Web browser activity. Spyware is
known to change computer settings, resulting in slow
connection speeds, different home pages, and/or loss of
Internet connection or functionality of other programs. In
an attempt to increase the understanding of spyware, a more
formal classification of its included software types is
provided by the term privacy-invasive software.
In
response to the emergence of spyware, a small industry has
sprung up dealing in anti-spyware software. Running
anti-spyware software has become a widely recognized element
of computer security practices for computers, especially
those running Microsoft Windows. A number of jurisdictions
have passed anti-spyware laws, which usually target any
software that is surreptitiously installed to control a
user's computer.
Spyware vs Adware
The term
adware frequently refers to any software which
displays advertisements, whether or not the user has
consented. Programs such as the
Eudora mail client display advertisements as an
alternative to
shareware registration fees. These may be classified as
"adware", in the sense of advertising-supported software,
but not as spyware. Adware in this form does not operate
surreptitiously or mislead the user, and provides the user
with a specific service.
Most
adware is spyware in a different
sense than "advertising-supported software": it displays
advertisements related to what it finds from spying on
users. Gator Software from
Claria Corporation (formerly GATOR) and Exact
Advertising's
BargainBuddy are examples. Visited Web sites frequently
install Gator on client machines in a surreptitious manner,
and it directs revenue to the installing site and to Claria
by displaying advertisements to the user. The user is shown
many
pop-up advertisements.
Other
spyware behavior, such as reporting on websites the user
visits, occurs in the background. The data is used for
"targeted" advertisement impressions. The prevalence of
spyware has cast suspicion on other programs that track Web
browsing, even for statistical or research purposes. Some
observers describe the
Alexa Toolbar, an Internet Explorer plug-in published by
Amazon.com, as spyware, and some anti-spyware programs
such as
Ad-Aware report it as such. Many of these
adware-distributing companies are backed by millions of
dollars of adware-generating revenues. Adware and spyware
are similar to viruses in that they can be considered
malicious in nature. People are profiting from misleading
adware, sometimes known as
scareware, such as
Antivirus 2009.
Similarly, software bundled with free, advertising-supported
programs acts as spyware (and, if removed, disables the
'parent' program), yet people are willing to download it.
This presents a dilemma for proprietors of anti-spyware
products whose removal tools may inadvertently disable
wanted programs. For example,
WhenUSave is ignored by popular anti-spyware program
Ad-Aware (but removed as spyware by most scanners)
because it is part of the popular (but recently
decommissioned) eDonkey client.
To address this dilemma, the
Anti-Spyware Coalition was formed in 2005 to establish
and document best practices regarding acceptable software
behavior.
Its website however does not appear to have been updated
since late 2008.
Spyware & Malware vs Viruses
Unlike
viruses and
worms, spyware does not usually
self-replicate. Like
many recent viruses, however, spyware—by
design—exploits infected computers for
commercial gain. Typical tactics include
delivery of unsolicited pop-up advertisements,
theft of personal information (including
financial information such as
credit card numbers), monitoring of
Web-browsing activity for
marketing purposes, and routing of
HTTP requests to advertising sites. However, spyware can be
dropped as a payload by a worm. -
[source:
wikipedia]
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