What are the types of Malware?

Dolphin
October 15, 2020
1:22 pm

Malware overview

Have you heard of viruses, spyware or keyloggers? Well, these are only a few branches under a massive tree of malware. Shorten from the words malicious software, malware can cause substantial threats towards your computer system, hardware, and the most valuable, personal data. Within this article, you will understand how to stay safe and avoid cybercriminals from accessing your information and planting these malicious programs onto your system.

Viruses:

You have almost certainly heard about computer viruses before, perhaps through movies, someone close to you which had experience or even if you have had personal experience. Either way, viruses can be exceptionally lethal. Viruses are malicious code hidden by clean code, a user (such as yourself) may be exposed to this through unpatched software, downloading files (like executable programs, pictures or audio files) from a malicious site or through attachments from email spoofing (Email spoofing is when a cyber-criminal impersonates as someone else on an email that is sent to you. You may believe that the email has been sent by someone you know or trust, like YouTube).

How can viruses affect your device? If you were to come across a virus on your device, you may experience some of the following:

• Crashes
• loss of data and,
• slow performance

Viruses can be programmed to delete your files, reformat your hard drives or infect your most beloved programs. Most viruses display message at a set time or if you run an infected program a certain number of times the virus will start deleting files this is called a trigger event.

Spyware:

Do you ever feel that someone is watching you while you’re on your device? If so, you may have spyware installed on your device. Spyware is a software that collects information about you or personal information including passwords, credit card information and browsing information (like cookies, history ect).

How does it work?

Spyware is a program that is installed and linked to your OS (operating system). These programs run in the background of your device, with you not knowing, secretly collecting information. If you experience any of these symptoms you may be a victim of spyware.

• Random pop up ads on your screen

• If your computer feels slow in anyway

• Emails that seem to have been sent from you, but you have not sent anything
• Your computer crashes more frequently
• When you search in your web browser you may be redirected to a different page and,
• Some of your files may have changed or have been removed.

In summary spyware can be extremely dangerous towards you as it can expose your confidential information and put it in the wrong hands all while you don’t have a clue.

Worms:

Worms are programs that are installed through downloads form malicious sites or (commonly through) email spoofing and phishing. The worms main goals are to either copy and replicate over and over again (which will eventually slow your system down and reduce your storage space) or they can steal personal data.

Worms can even install a backdoor into the system which will allow hackers to remotely access the computer and gain control all while the victim is unaware.
The easiest ways to tell if your computer has a worm installed is to keep an eye on your computers performance, a worm could drastically decrease your overall performance of your device, if any new files are found in your storage they may be maliciously active. If your hard drive space is suddenly decreasing this could be a cause of the worms duplicating and using the storage.

Ransomware:

Ransomware is a software that stops you from accessing your own data and makes messages frequently pop up demanding a certain fee to let you access your own files. In other words, cybercriminals keep your data ‘hostage’ until the desired amount of money is paid to the criminal (hence the name, ransom). If the desired amount is not paid in the time frame that was displayed in the messages, then your data that the cybercriminal is holding ‘hostage’ may be deleted. Ransomware is common among ‘FREE’ downloads on websites.

Key-loggers:

Keystroke logging otherwise known as keylogging, is locally or remotely recording keystrokes from when a user presses a key on their keyboard. From this point it is remotely sent over the internet to be received by the hacker. keylogging can be very serious as a hacker can get a hold of someone’s private information which includes usernames and passwords, or even payment information.

Trojans:

You may have heard of the Greek story of the trojan horse (which was a hollow statue of a horse which the Greeks hid themselves in to bypass and enter Troy). A trojan (in computing) is a malicious program which looks legitimate to a user when downloaded but like any secrete revels a dark side. Trojans are a direct delivery tool to plant other malware, this other malware could include keyloggers, spyware and viruses.

How to stay safe?

Now that you know about these different types of malware, you should know how to be safe from them or at least be aware of malware already on your system. A major factor to keep safe would be to make sure all your software, drivers and programs are up to date (yes that includes windows) since they frequently update their security. If you want to be extra safe from viruses you could get an anti-virus such as Malware Bytes or Bit Defender but, the default windows defender does a wonderful job at that already due to its change over the years and it updated virus definitions.