Criminals often use malware to send spam, obtain personal and financial information and even steal your identity. It can be used to spy on your online activity and may generate unwanted advertisements or make your browser display certain website sites or search results. Phishing attacks use email or fraudulent websites to try to trick you into providing personal or financial information to compromise an account or steal money by posing as a trustworthy entity.
Antivirus programs and computer protection software are designed to evaluate data such as web pages, files, software and applications to help find and eradicate malware as quickly as possible. Most provide real-time protection, which can protect your devices from incoming threats; scan your entire computer regularly for known threats and provide automatic updates; and identify, block and delete malicious codes and software.
Fortunately, there are a number of excellent products on the market today to choose from. Antivirus software begins operating by checking your computer programs and files against a database of known types of malware. Since new viruses are constantly created and distributed by hackers, it will also scan computers for the possibility of new or unknown type of malware threats. However, when that fails, the AV software is used to disinfect the infected programs or to completely clean malicious software from the operating system.
AV software uses various techniques to identify malicious software, which often self-protects and hides deep in an operating system. Advanced malware may use undocumented operating system functionality and obscure techniques in order to persist and avoid being detected. Because of the large attack surface these days, AV software is designed to deal with all kinds of malicious payloads coming from both trusted and untrusted sources.
Antivirus software helps protect your computer against malware and cybercriminals. Antivirus software looks at data — web pages, files, software, applications — traveling over the network to your devices. It searches for known threats and monitors the behavior of all programs, flagging suspicious behavior. It seeks to block or remove malware as quickly as possible. Antivirus protection is essential, given the array of constantly-emerging cyberthreats.
But it might not be that simple. Ensuring your antivirus software is up and running, and up-to-date, is a good place to start. What exactly is antivirus software designed to do? Antivirus software is a vital component of your overall online and computer security strategy in its protection against data and security breaches along with other threats. When looked at simply, a computer virus is similar to a cold virus. These viruses, spyware, and other malicious software are known as malware, and can be surreptitiously installed on your computer or device.
Malware can do everything from crashing your device to monitoring or controlling your online activity. This control may enable hackers to send spam and steal your private information, which could eventually lead to identity theft. Several types of antivirus programs have evolved over the years. Malware, or malicious software, installs viruses and spyware on your computer or device without your knowledge. Malware can steal your login information, use your computer to send spam, crash your computer system, and essentially give cybercriminals access to your devices and the information stored on them, and even the ability to monitor and control your online activity.
Malware signature antivirus software detects malware signatures, which are digital fingerprints of malicious software. Antivirus protection can scan for specific malicious codes, identify specific viruses, and disable these programs. Many attacks attempt to appear as if they originated from a system administrator or official service, increasing the likelihood that end users will execute them and infect their systems.
Backdoor creation. The majority of recent outbreaks have attempted to open some form of unauthorized access to already infected systems, enabling a hacker to repeatedly access the systems.
This repeated access is used to infect systems with new malware, using them as "zombies" in coordinated denial of service attacks, or to run any code a hacker may wish to run. E-mail address theft. E-mail addresses harvested from infected systems are used by malware programs to forward themselves to other victims and malware authors also may collect them. Malware authors can then use the addresses to send new malware variants, barter them with other malware authors for tools or virus source code, or sell them to others interested in using them to produce spam mail.
Embedded e-mail engines. E-mail is the primary means for malware propagation. Many forms of malware now embed an e-mail engine to enable the malicious code to propagate much more quickly and with less likelihood of creating unusual activity that can be easily detected.
Illicit mass-mailers now exploit backdoors in infected systems to capitalize on these opportunities to use such e-mail engines. As a result, it is believed the majority of spam produced last year was sent via such infected systems. Exploiting product vulnerabilities. Malware is capitalizing more frequently on product vulnerabilities to propagate, which enables the malicious code to spread much faster. Exploiting new Internet technologies.
As new Internet tools become available, malware authors quickly examine them to determine how they might exploit them. Recently, Instant Messaging and peer-to-peer P2P networks have become attack vectors for such efforts. These Malware terms and techniques are discussed in detail in the following chapters of this guide. Microsoft remains strongly committed to securing the applications that it produces and to working with the company's partners to combat malware threats.
Recent Microsoft efforts to reduce the impact of these threats include:. Alliance members exchange technical information about newly discovered malware so they can quickly communicate target, impact, and remediation information to customers.
Researching new security technologies such as Active Protection Technology and Dynamic System Protection to help secure the Microsoft Windows platform.
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