What are you going to do if your computer gets infected with a malicious program? More importantly, what can you do to protect yourself?

PC users have long struggled with the threat of malicious programs taking over their computers in one way or another. As computers have become more sophisticated, so have attempts to compromise them. Back in earlier days of personal computers (the 80’s and 90’s), viruses would spread from one computer to another, typically through the sharing of removable (floppy) disks. Back then, you needed a good antivirus program to keep yourself safe.

Now it’s more complicated. In recent years, these attacks have become more threatening in two ways:

     1. The means of infection (covered in this article)

     2. The method of infection (coming soon, in part 2)

It’s no longer just viruses per se that you need to watch out for. In more recent years, attacks on your computer, malicious or not, have developed into four distinct categories: traditional viruses, spyware, adware, and malware.

The “traditional” virus, which is the attack on your computer that uses the same basic methodology as viruses that began showing up in the 80’s and 90’s, is still a major threat today. A computer virus consists of malicious code attached to and often hidden within another program that will do something to your computer through deceptive means. Antivirus scanners read files you are running on your computer before they are started to ensure that nothing is deceptively hidden in them which would be destructive.

Viruses are not just any program that can harm your computer. For example, if you executed a program called, “formatc”, and that program formatted your c: drive making it unusable, that would not really be considered a virus attack. There is nothing hidden in the program doing something in secret. Rather, it’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do, albeit undesirable. But if you took the same program and hid it inside another program (like Microsoft Word), it would then be considered a virus.

We have other attacks to deal with beyond the traditional virus. Spyware, as the name implies, is software which is designed to spy on you and your computer. An example of spyware would be an application which installs itself on your hard drive, reads all your files, and sends the information off to someone else over the Internet. This may result in you receiving email advertisements based on what your demonstrated interests are. Spyware is not necessarily a virus. In fact, many spywares actually ask the user to agree with the installation of spyware, usually in exchange for something the user wants such as a cool-looking screensaver.

Adware is similar to spyware in that it also is not necessarily a virus. Its purpose is to advertise something. For example, an adware program might pop up a window once in a while which encourages you to buy a product or visit a web site where, presumably, you will be further encouraged to make a purchase. It’s not unusual for various online services to offer something to you for free in exchange for your agreement that they will present you with advertising.

Malware, as the name implies, is an attempt to do something malicious to your computer. However, it also is not necessarily a virus. A simple example of this would be the one I used above, a program called “formatc” which formats your c: drive, making your computer unusable. It’s not doing anything other than what it’s supposed to do, so it’s not really a virus. If I sent such a program to you via your email and said, here, run this program on your computer, and you did so, your antivirus program is not necessarily going to stop it (it’s not a virus, remember?). But I’ve used a simplistic example to make a point. Most malware is much more sophisticated than this. The programmers who design malware don’t want to spy on you and don’t want to sell you anything. They just want to harm your computer maliciously.

In Part 2 we’ll talk about how these types of attacks on your computer are spread and how to keep yourself protected. However, at this point, let me encourage you to take care in what you expose your computer to. Don’t visit suspicious web sites, and don’t open suspicious emails. Keep your computer protected with an up-to-date antivirus program all the time, and don’t take for granted that you are protected.

If you need more information, please call us at 630-379-0330.