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Protection from PC Intruders
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By James Hayes
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Years have passed since the age of innocence in the computingworld. Nowadays, there exists an increasing variety of malicioussoftware programs as well as e-mail messages carrying them. Mostof these programs can either be classified as viruses, worms,spyware and trojans. Amazingly, one of the victims of suchprograms was Ed Gibson, Head of Security for Microsoft UK, whosePC was infected by a dialer and started transmitting suchprograms to other unsuspecting victims.
Before we start, however, here are some quick definitions:
Worms, Viruses: Malicious executable code that can copy itselffrom one PC to another. Most of them don't perform any otheroperations apart from simply copying themselves. They can,however, multiply like that very quickly and clog a system. Thefamous Internet Worm actually brought the whole Internet on it'sknees, back in 1988.
Trojans: Seemingly harmless programs but not really. They can bedisguised as utilities, or as a system process but actuallycontain executable code intended for other tasks. A trojan maycontain a virus, or a backdoor through which an intruder canhave complete access to your PC.
Spyware, adware: Programs that spy on your PC and record andtransmit data such as the sites you usually go to, the fields inon-line forms you use (such as your e-mail accounts, your creditcard numbers and generally everything you enter in a web form).They are usually VERY poorly written programs and as such, willoften slow down your PC or corrupt your software. (Yes, if theywere really good written, they would actually go by unnoticed.Lucky for us, most talented programmers have jobs writing realsoftware rather than parasites...)
Dialers: Programs that use your modem to dial numbers withoutyou being aware of them. With the use of broadband connections,they tend to become a thing of the past. And we'll not deal withthem in this article.
It is worth mentioning that in recent years, a significantincrease in the number of adware and spyware programs has beennoticed, with a subsequent reduction in the number of newviruses being created. This can be explained as follows: Whileviruses can be a serious threat and can greatly and irreversiblyharm your system, adware and spyware programs can actuallygather very important personal information such as your creditcard number and deliver that information to whoever wasresponsible for the attack, which most of the times is thecreator of the program. An effective system security tool shouldnot just locate these malicious files on your PC but should alsobe able to permanently erase them.
Most anti-virus programs can successfuly locate, identify andremove viruses but things are not as easy when it comes tospyware and adware. There is no product in the market that caneliminate 100% of spyware. It is therefore recommended that youinstall and periodically run at least two anti-spyware programs.It would be better if at least one of your chosen anti-spywareprograms offers some kind of real-time protection. This meansthat a component of the anti-spyware programs stays resident onyour computer memory and monitors traffic between your PC andthe Internet. If a web page tries to send malicious code to you,or if an executable file tries to install that code, theanti-spyware resident component will detect it and block it. Youcan then, periodically run another anti-spyware program to scanyour disk, in case something was missed by the first program (aswe've said, no program currently detects and removes 100% ofspyware).
Finally, it is crucial to frequently update your anti-spywareprogram or programs. New spyware programs are created all thetime and it might be often that you find your PC infected withthe latest spyware that your anti-spyware program failed todetect before you updated it. So don't forget to update youranti-spyware about once a month to be as safe as possible!
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