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Malware is a generic term for bad software. Malware is malicious code planted on your computer, and it can give the attacker a truly alarming degree of control over your computer, network, and files - all without you knowing. Malware is software designed to infiltrate and/or damage a computer system without the owner's informed 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 also known as droppers are used to start off a worm outbreak, by dropping a worm into users' computer. A worm, on the other hand, is a program which transmits itself over a network to infect other computers. One of the most common ways that spyware is distributed is as a Trojan horse, bundled with a piece of downloaded software that the user downloads from the internet or a P2P file-trading network.

Most early malware programs, including the first worm and a great number of MS-DOS viruses, was written as experiments or pranks generally intended to be fun or merely annoying rather than to cause havoc. However, since the rise of widespread broadband internet , more malicious software has been designed for a profit motive. Programs offering to speed up the internet will most likely contain adware. Some malware is known to interrupt your internet connection or even cause your PC to crash. 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 still be an important delivery system for malware authors, though the rising adoption of email server security is making malware writers turn to other routes for infection. Emailed malware is also looking more sophisticated and people who assume they can identify any suspect emails through bad spelling,bad grammar or suspicious subjects will be caught out. Be very careful about attachments, specially those that you receive from unknown sources. You should also be careful with attachments from those you know. Never open any email attachment you are not expecting to receive, even if it appears to come from a co-worker ( you cannot acquire malware by reading the main text of a mail message, unless your patching is very out of date). By the end of the decade, the growth of email gave malware an effective infection route into new machines.

Malware is a catch-all term for various dangerous software, including adware, spyware and browser hijacking software. Malware is often included with 'spam' and avoiding "spam" will reduce your exposure to malware. Malware is now being written for every possible OS (operating system), communications channel and businesses that do not patch their systems religiously or fail to use security software and internet protection software 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 :-)

Robert Patero is a computer scientist/programmer, adviser and internet veteran. In his daily job he works mostly with security and programming. He has extensive knowledge about computers and the internet. He recommends a FREE scan with: SpywareBot / SpywareRemover / AntiSpyware 2007.