Information

Malware is a generic term for bad software. Malware is malicious code downloaded to your computer, and it can give the attacker a truly alarming degree of control over your system, network, and data - all without your knowledge. Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer without the owner's consent. Malware is a combination of the words 'malicious' and 'software' and is a piece of software (computer program) written by someone with mischievous or, more usually, malicious intent.

Network

Trojan horses known as droppers are used to start off a worm outbreak, by injecting a worm into users' local networks. A worm, on the other hand, is a program which actively transmits itself over a network to infect other systems. One of the most common ways that malware is distributed is as a Trojan horse, bundled with a piece of downloaded software that the user downloads off the internet or a P2P file-trading network.

Many early malware programs, including the first Internet worm and a number of MS-DOS viruses, was written as experiments or pranks generally intended to be fun or merely annoying rather than to cause havoc. But, since the rise of widespread broadband internet , more damaging software has been designed for profit motive. Programs that offers to speed up the internet will most likely contain adware. Some malware is known to interrupt your internet connection or even make your computer to hang. Internet rootkits, annoyware, pseudorootkits, spyware, trojan horse programs, email relays, adware, spam relays, scam downloads, spam proxies, email/spam robots, keyloggers and hijackers are perhaps the greatest security threat to individuals and institutional networks in existence.

Email

Email will continue to be an important vector for malware writers, though the rising adoption of email gateway security is making malware writers turn to other routes for infection. Emailed malware is also looking more sophisticated and those who assume they can identify any infected emails through poor spelling,poor grammar or bizarre subjects will be caught out. Be careful about attachments, specially those that you receive from unknown sources. You should also be careful with attachments from people you know. Never open any attachment you are not expecting , even if it appears to come from a co-worker (in general you cannot acquire malware by reading the main text of a mail message, unless your patching is out of date). By 2000, the growth of email gave malware a very effective infection route into new machines.

Malware is a catch-all term for various dangerous software, including browser hijacking software, adware and spyware. Malware is often included with 'spam' and avoiding "spam" will reduce your exposure . Malware is now being made for every possible platform, communications channel and businesses that do not patch their systems religiously or fail to use protective software and internet protection will find themselves at risk.

Any one not investing in security software, will eventually get infected. That's the hard truth! Maybe you are already infected... You may scan your PC for FREE here: SpywareRemover or AntiSpyware 2007.

Have a safe day :-)