What is Malware, its Infection & Types

What is Malware

Malware is made up of Two Words: malicious & software.A malware is a file of code or refers to any program that is copied to your computer without your knowledge typically delivered via a network & is intended to cause harm to the functioning of the computer system.

Fig: Malware

What Malware Can Do:

It can harm the computer & productivity in many ways.Some of the ways malware causes harm are:

• It can corrupt the program or data files in the computer so that program do not work properly or leading to loss of information.
• It can send junk or spam e-mails,which leads to your mailbox getting cluttered & short of space.
• It can destroy or corrupt e-mail message from e-mail mailbox without your knowledge.
• It can send your personal data to other person or unsuspecting targets.
• It allow attackers to get hold of your computer.
• It can install other malware onto your computer.
• Malware can use up the resource of a computer such as processor,memory & disk space,causing the computer to work slow or even crush.

What Malware Cannot Do:

• It can not harm read only media like CD-ROM’s or DVD-ROM’s.
• It can not harm or damage to the hardware of your computer system.
• Malware can not cause computer system to stop functioning as it needs the functional computer system to cause further damage.

Indications of Malware infection:

Some of the indication of malware infection are:

• A program takes longer than usual time to load & memory-intensive operations take a lot of time to start.
• A hard disk drive can not allow to save files,although there is enough space.
• The file stored in the computer start getting deleted on their own.
• Files have strange names you do not recognize.
• We are not able to access the hard disk or other disk drives.
• Installed memory becomes less without any reason.
• Unusual messages appear on the screen.
• Web Browser opens a different web page from the one we want to open.

 Fig:Malware Infection Symptoms

Types of Malware:

Computer virus:

It is a malware that spreads or replicates by copying itself. It is able to spreads from one computer to another computer & to interfere normal computer operations.The effect of this virus may be simple,sudden as sudden display of pop-up messages on the screen or may be serious,such as destroying program & data.

Trojans:

Also known as Trojan Horse,is a program that hides its true intention or is main intended to take control on your computer.It is designed to cause,harm & damage or perform or other harmful action on your data or network.It can cause deletion of files on a disk,erase all data from a disk,send personal information to other person without your knowledge.

Worms:

It is a malware that automatically sends itself to other computers via a network,without any human interaction.It spreads from one to another computer via a program that access the network resources such as  a web browser.It do not cause harm or damage to files or data but slows down a computer by using a network bandwidth.

Spam:

Spam e-mail can also be a source of malware & frauds.These e-mails full the mail inbox & use the storage space meant for information.The process of sending spam email is called spamming.