Posts Tagged ‘malware’

The main types of malware include adware, backdoor, heuristic, rogues, trojans, viruses and worms. Each of these have their own level of danger and degree of maliciousness.

Adware or spyware is a small program designed to show advertisements on your computer. Often adware reports personal information back to its owners and as a result your privacy could be violated.

Backdoor programs are used to gain access to a computer bypassing its security programs, giving the attacker unlimited rights. Backdoor programs can spy on a user and install other malware on a computer.

Heuristic detection is a technique to detect malware by empirical means without having the specific data, based on observing the behavior of the suspect malware, or perhaps even the pattern of what it does.

Rogue programs are malicious programs that are disguised as a trustworthy anti-spyware program or registry cleaner. These programs are put on the market to scare you into buying them because they either make claims about the safety of your computer, give erroneous scan results or install their own malware on your system.

A trojan horse is a malicious program that pretends to have a particular function, but is actually destructive. Trojans cannot multiply themselves like a virus or worm.

A virus is a malicious program that multiplies and is capable of attaching itself to other programs after being executed. Viruses then cause an infection causing various degrees of damage to your computer.

Worms are often characterized as a malicious application that uses a host machine to infect others. Therefore worms can create enormous damage on networks with multiple computers.

Knowing the main types of malware could be helpful to understand what kinds of dangerous software could threaten your PC. Keep yourself informed in order to avoid a possible threat or attack to your computer system.