Malware Attack

This morning, when my wife switched on her PC at her office, the antivirus alerter pop up to tell that her PC infected by malware and provided some guidelines for her to clean and delete the malware.

Malware has evolved tremendously over the last couple of years. The abuse malware had inflicted on financially and throughout the networks were realized almost immediately. Malware, when released, have extremely short lifecycles. But the outcomes are not to be taken lightly. Many variations of just one malware are highly common in the malware world. The ones with longer lifespan than other malware tend to be the majority of the percentage of computers infected.

The word malware comes from the words malicious and software.
Types of malware include:

- Computer viruses
- Computer worms
- Trojan horses
- Logic bombs
- Spyware
- Adware
- Spam
- Popups

Unlike any other infectious causing virtual pathogens, malware reaches levels of sophistication. This further makes an impact on the computer literate community. Every single malware is designed and released for a purpose, with the short lifespan signaling the programmer's intentions of the program. Malware also switches tactics whenever it sees fit.

With the high threat of malware, countries worldwide address this issue with solutions to protect its users. This factor was one of the many highlights of early malware experienced during the last two years. Users are anxious over the threats pertaining to malware, and companies attempting to eliminate these pest are causing the malware world to become stronger. Consider Microsoft's integration of RSS into future Internet Explorer versions and a malware being injected into the RSS feed due to a web application vulnerability on the service. Every time something is created to prevent any malware from infecting the users in any way, the malware steps into the game ahead of everyone else.

Ironically, the malware world is highly competitive. All malware is in a competition to infect the higher percentage of the Internet population with malware authors waging a war amongst each other. However, at the same time, they are unintentionally collaborating information. With this, malware continues to be rather sneaky, requiring less user interaction in activating a malware code.
During 2005, other devices such as MP3 players, or external hard drives, were getting infected with malware.

National security was also at risk with Japanese nuclear data being leaked on the Internet through a virus on a personal computer. The virus exposed interiors, details of regular inspections of repair works, and names of workers. Damages also includes public hospitals in Hong Kong, one-third of Taiwan's post office branches, British Airways, Sydney train system, Scandinavian banks, and British Coast Guard.