WIKIBOOKS
DISPONIBILI
?????????

ART
- Great Painters
BUSINESS&LAW
- Accounting
- Fundamentals of Law
- Marketing
- Shorthand
CARS
- Concept Cars
GAMES&SPORT
- Videogames
- The World of Sports

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
- Blogs
- Free Software
- Google
- My Computer

- PHP Language and Applications
- Wikipedia
- Windows Vista

EDUCATION
- Education
LITERATURE
- Masterpieces of English Literature
LINGUISTICS
- American English

- English Dictionaries
- The English Language

MEDICINE
- Medical Emergencies
- The Theory of Memory
MUSIC&DANCE
- The Beatles
- Dances
- Microphones
- Musical Notation
- Music Instruments
SCIENCE
- Batteries
- Nanotechnology
LIFESTYLE
- Cosmetics
- Diets
- Vegetarianism and Veganism
TRADITIONS
- Christmas Traditions
NATURE
- Animals

- Fruits And Vegetables



ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Adobe Reader
  2. Adware
  3. Altavista
  4. AOL
  5. Apple Macintosh
  6. Application software
  7. Arrow key
  8. Artificial Intelligence
  9. ASCII
  10. Assembly language
  11. Automatic translation
  12. Avatar
  13. Babylon
  14. Bandwidth
  15. Bit
  16. BitTorrent
  17. Black hat
  18. Blog
  19. Bluetooth
  20. Bulletin board system
  21. Byte
  22. Cache memory
  23. Celeron
  24. Central processing unit
  25. Chat room
  26. Client
  27. Command line interface
  28. Compiler
  29. Computer
  30. Computer bus
  31. Computer card
  32. Computer display
  33. Computer file
  34. Computer games
  35. Computer graphics
  36. Computer hardware
  37. Computer keyboard
  38. Computer networking
  39. Computer printer
  40. Computer program
  41. Computer programmer
  42. Computer science
  43. Computer security
  44. Computer software
  45. Computer storage
  46. Computer system
  47. Computer terminal
  48. Computer virus
  49. Computing
  50. Conference call
  51. Context menu
  52. Creative commons
  53. Creative Commons License
  54. Creative Technology
  55. Cursor
  56. Data
  57. Database
  58. Data storage device
  59. Debuggers
  60. Demo
  61. Desktop computer
  62. Digital divide
  63. Discussion groups
  64. DNS server
  65. Domain name
  66. DOS
  67. Download
  68. Download manager
  69. DVD-ROM
  70. DVD-RW
  71. E-mail
  72. E-mail spam
  73. File Transfer Protocol
  74. Firewall
  75. Firmware
  76. Flash memory
  77. Floppy disk drive
  78. GNU
  79. GNU General Public License
  80. GNU Project
  81. Google
  82. Google AdWords
  83. Google bomb
  84. Graphics
  85. Graphics card
  86. Hacker
  87. Hacker culture
  88. Hard disk
  89. High-level programming language
  90. Home computer
  91. HTML
  92. Hyperlink
  93. IBM
  94. Image processing
  95. Image scanner
  96. Instant messaging
  97. Instruction
  98. Intel
  99. Intel Core 2
  100. Interface
  101. Internet
  102. Internet bot
  103. Internet Explorer
  104. Internet protocols
  105. Internet service provider
  106. Interoperability
  107. IP addresses
  108. IPod
  109. Joystick
  110. JPEG
  111. Keyword
  112. Laptop computer
  113. Linux
  114. Linux kernel
  115. Liquid crystal display
  116. List of file formats
  117. List of Google products
  118. Local area network
  119. Logitech
  120. Machine language
  121. Mac OS X
  122. Macromedia Flash
  123. Mainframe computer
  124. Malware
  125. Media center
  126. Media player
  127. Megabyte
  128. Microsoft
  129. Microsoft Windows
  130. Microsoft Word
  131. Mirror site
  132. Modem
  133. Motherboard
  134. Mouse
  135. Mouse pad
  136. Mozilla Firefox
  137. Mp3
  138. MPEG
  139. MPEG-4
  140. Multimedia
  141. Musical Instrument Digital Interface
  142. Netscape
  143. Network card
  144. News ticker
  145. Office suite
  146. Online auction
  147. Online chat
  148. Open Directory Project
  149. Open source
  150. Open source software
  151. Opera
  152. Operating system
  153. Optical character recognition
  154. Optical disc
  155. output
  156. PageRank
  157. Password
  158. Pay-per-click
  159. PC speaker
  160. Peer-to-peer
  161. Pentium
  162. Peripheral
  163. Personal computer
  164. Personal digital assistant
  165. Phishing
  166. Pirated software
  167. Podcasting
  168. Pointing device
  169. POP3
  170. Programming language
  171. QuickTime
  172. Random access memory
  173. Routers
  174. Safari
  175. Scalability
  176. Scrollbar
  177. Scrolling
  178. Scroll wheel
  179. Search engine
  180. Security cracking
  181. Server
  182. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
  183. Skype
  184. Social software
  185. Software bug
  186. Software cracker
  187. Software library
  188. Software utility
  189. Solaris Operating Environment
  190. Sound Blaster
  191. Soundcard
  192. Spam
  193. Spamdexing
  194. Spam in blogs
  195. Speech recognition
  196. Spoofing attack
  197. Spreadsheet
  198. Spyware
  199. Streaming media
  200. Supercomputer
  201. Tablet computer
  202. Telecommunications
  203. Text messaging
  204. Trackball
  205. Trojan horse
  206. TV card
  207. Unicode
  208. Uniform Resource Identifier
  209. Unix
  210. URL redirection
  211. USB flash drive
  212. USB port
  213. User interface
  214. Vlog
  215. Voice over IP
  216. Warez
  217. Wearable computer
  218. Web application
  219. Web banner
  220. Web browser
  221. Web crawler
  222. Web directories
  223. Web indexing
  224. Webmail
  225. Web page
  226. Website
  227. Wiki
  228. Wikipedia
  229. WIMP
  230. Windows CE
  231. Windows key
  232. Windows Media Player
  233. Windows Vista
  234. Word processor
  235. World Wide Web
  236. Worm
  237. XML
  238. X Window System
  239. Yahoo
  240. Zombie computer
 



MY COMPUTER
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Malware

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Malware or malicious software is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words "malicious" and "software". The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

Many normal computer users are however still unfamiliar with the term, and most never use it. Instead, "(computer) virus" is used in common parlance and often in the general media to describe all kinds of malware. Another term that has been recently coined for malware is badware, perhaps due to the anti-malware initiative Stopbadware or corruption of the term "malware".

Software is considered malware based on the perceived intent of the creator rather than any particular features. It includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, adware, and other malicious and unwanted software. In law, malware is sometimes known as a computer contaminant, for instance in the legal codes of California, West Virginia, and several other U.S. states.[1]

Malware should not be confused with defective software, that is, software which has a legitimate purpose but contains harmful bugs.

Purposes

Many early infectious programs, including the Internet Worm and a number of MS-DOS viruses, were written as experiments or pranks generally intended to be harmless or merely annoying rather than to cause serious damage. Young programmers learning about viruses and the techniques used to write them might write one to prove that they can do it, or to see how far it could spread. As late as 1999, widespread viruses such as the Melissa virus appear to have been written chiefly as pranks.

A slightly more hostile intent can be found in programs designed to vandalize or cause data loss. Many DOS viruses, and the Windows ExploreZip worm, were designed to destroy files on a hard disk, or to corrupt the filesystem by writing junk data. Network-borne worms such as the 2001 Code Red worm or the Ramen worm fall into the same category. Designed to vandalize web pages, these worms may seem like the online equivalent to graffiti tagging, with the author's name or affinity group appearing everywhere the worm goes.

However, since the rise of widespread broadband Internet access, more malicious software has been designed for a profit motive. For instance, since 2003, the majority of widespread viruses and worms have been designed to take control of users' computers for black-market exploitation. [citation needed] Infected "zombie computers" are used to send email spam, to host contraband data such as child pornography, or to engage in distributed denial-of-service attacks as a form of extortion.

Another strictly for-profit category of malware has emerged in spyware -- programs designed to monitor users' web browsing, display unsolicited advertisements, or redirect affiliate marketing revenues to the spyware creator. Spyware programs do not spread like viruses; they are generally installed by exploiting security holes or are packaged with user-installed software.

Infectious malware: viruses and worms

The best-known types of malware, viruses and worms, are known for the manner in which they spread, rather than any other particular behavior. Originally, the term computer virus was used for a program which infected other executable software, while a worm transmitted itself over a network to infect other computers. More recently, the words are often used interchangeably.

Today, some draw the distinction between viruses and worms by saying that a virus requires user intervention to spread, whereas a worm spreads automatically.[citation needed] Using this distinction, infections transmitted by email or Microsoft Word documents, which rely on the recipient opening a file to infect the system, would be classified as viruses, not worms.

Capsule history of viruses and worms

Main articles: Computer virus, computer worm.

Before Internet access became widespread, viruses spread on personal computers by infecting programs or the executable boot sectors of floppy disks. By inserting a copy of itself into the machine code instructions in these executables, a virus causes itself to be run whenever the program is run or the disk is booted. Early computer viruses were written for the Apple II and Macintosh, but they became more widespread with the dominance of the IBM PC and MS-DOS system. Executable-infecting viruses are dependent on users exchanging software or boot floppies, so they spread heavily in computer hobbyist circles.

The first worms, network-borne infectious programs, originated not on personal computers, but on multitasking Unix systems. The first well-known worm was the Internet Worm of 1988, which infected SunOS and VAX BSD systems. Unlike a virus, this worm did not insert itself into other programs. Instead, it exploited security holes in network server programs and started itself running as a separate process. This same behavior is used by today's worms as well.

With the rise of the Microsoft Windows platform in the 1990s, and the flexible macro systems of its applications, it became possible to write infectious code in the macro language of Microsoft Word and similar programs. These macro viruses infect documents and templates rather than applications, but rely on the fact that macros in a Word document are a form of executable code.

Today, worms are most commonly written for the Windows OS, although a small number are also written for Linux and Unix systems. Worms today work in the same basic way as 1988's Internet Worm: they scan the network for computers with vulnerable network services, break in to those computers, and copy themselves over. Worm outbreaks have become a cyclical plague for both home users and businesses, eclipsed recently in terms of damage by spyware.[citation needed]

Concealment: Trojan horses, rootkits, and backdoors

For a malicious program to accomplish its goals, it must be able to do so without being shut down by the user or administrator of the computer it's running on. Concealment can also help get the malware installed in the first place. By disguising a malicious program as something innocuous or desirable, users may be tempted to install it without knowing what it does. This is the technique of the Trojan horse or trojan.

Broadly speaking, a Trojan horse is any program that invites the user to run it, but conceals a harmful or malicious payload. The payload may take effect immediately and can lead to many undesirable effects, such as deleting all the user's files, or more commonly it may install further harmful software into the user's system to serve the creator's longer-term goals. Trojan horses known as droppers are used to start off a worm outbreak, by injecting the worm into users' local networks.

One of the most common ways that spyware is distributed is as a Trojan horse, bundled with a piece of desirable software that the user downloads off the Web or a peer-to-peer file-trading network. When the user installs the software, the spyware is installed alongside. Spyware authors who attempt to act legally may include an end-user license agreement which states the behavior of the spyware in loose terms, but with the knowledge that users are unlikely to read or understand it.

Once a malicious program is installed on a system, it is often useful to the creator if it stays concealed. The same is true when a human attacker breaks into a computer directly. Techniques known as rootkits allow this concealment, by modifying the host operating system so that the malware is hidden from the user. Rootkits can prevent a malicious process from being reported in the process table, or keep its files from being read. Originally, a rootkit was a set of tools installed by a human attacker on a Unix system where the attacker had gained administrator (root) access. Today, the term is used more generally for concealment routines in a malicious program.

A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication procedures. Many computer manufacturers preinstall backdoors on their systems to provide technical support for customers.[verification needed] Hackers typically use backdoors to secure remote access to a computer, while attempting to remain hidden from casual inspection. To install backdoors hackers use either Trojan horse or computer worm.

Malware for profit: spyware, botnets, loggers, and dialers

During the 1980s and 1990s, it was usually taken for granted that malicious programs were created as a form of vandalism or prank. More recently, the greater share of malware programs have been written with a financial or profit motive in mind. This can be taken as the malware authors' choice to monetize their control over infected systems: to turn that control into a source of revenue.

Since 2003 or so, the most costly form of malware in terms of time and money spent in recovery has been the broad category known as spyware. [citation needed] Spyware programs are commercially produced for the purpose of gathering information about computer users, showing them pop-up ads, or altering web-browser behavior for the financial benefit of the spyware creator. For instance, some spyware programs redirect search engine results to paid advertisements. Others often called "stealware" by the media overwrite affiliate marketing codes so that revenue goes to the spyware creator rather than the intended recipient.

Spyware programs are sometimes installed as Trojan horses of one sort or another.[verification needed] They differ in that their creators present themselves openly as businesses, for instance by selling advertising space on the pop-ups created by the malware. Most such programs present the user with an end-user license agreement which purportedly protects the creator from prosecution under computer contaminant laws. However, spyware EULAs have not yet been upheld in court.

Another way that financially-motivated malware creator can monetize their infections is to directly use the infected computers to do work for the creator. Spammer viruses, such as the Sobig and Mydoom virus families, are commissioned by e-mail spam gangs. The infected computers are used as proxies to send out spam messages. The advantage to spammers of using infected computers is that they are available in large supply (thanks to the virus) and they provide anonymity, protecting the spammer from prosecution. Spammers have also used infected PCs to target anti-spam organizations with distributed denial-of-service attacks.

In order to coordinate the activity of many infected computers, attackers have used coordinating systems known as botnets. In a botnet, the malware or malbot logs in to an Internet Relay Chat channel or other chat system. The attacker can then give instructions to all the infected systems simultaneously. Botnets can also be used to push upgraded malware to the infected systems, keeping them resistant to anti-virus software or other security measures.

Lastly, it is possible for a malware creator to profit by simply stealing from the person whose computer is infected. Some malware programs install a key logger, which copies down the user's keystrokes when entering a password, credit card number, or other information that may be useful to the creator. This is then transmitted to the malware creator automatically, enabling credit card fraud and other theft. Similarly, malware may copy the CD key or password for online games, allowing the creator to steal accounts or virtual items.

Another way of stealing money from the infected PC owner is to take control of the modem and dial an expensive toll call. Dialer (or porn dialer) software dials up a premium-rate telephone number such as a U.S. "900 number" and leave the line open, charging the toll to the infected user.

Vulnerability to malware

In this context, as throughout, it should be borne in mind that the “system” under attack may be of various types, e.g. a single computer and operating system, a network or an application.

Various factors make a system more vulnerable to malware:

  • Homogeneity – e.g. when all computers in a network run the same OS, if you can break that OS, you can break into any computer running it.
  • Bugginess – most systems containing errors which may be exploited by malware.
  • Unconfirmed code – code from a floppy disk, CD or USB device may be executed without the user’s agreement.
  • Over-privileged users – some systems allow all users to modify their internal structures.
  • Over-privileged code – most popular systems allow code executed by a user all rights of that user.

An oft-cited cause of vulnerability of networks is homogeneity or software monoculture. In particular, Microsoft Windows has such a large share of the market that concentrating on it will enable a cracker to subvert a large number of systems. Introducing inhomogeneity purely for the sake of robustness would however bring high costs in terms of training and maintenance.

Most systems contain bugs which may be exploited by malware. Typical examples are buffer overruns, in which an interface designed to store data in a small area of memory allows the caller to supply too much, and then overwrites its internal structures. This may used by malware to force the system to execute its code.

Originally, PCs had to be booted from floppy disks, and until recently it was common for this to be the default boot device. This meant that a corrupt floppy disk could subvert the computer during booting, and the same applies to CDs. Although that is now less common, it is still possible to forget that one has changed the default, and rare that a BIOS makes one confirm a boot from removable media.

In some systems, non-administrator users are over-privileged by design, in the sense that they are allowed to modify internal structures of the system. In some environments, users are over-privileged because they have been inappropriately granted administrator or equivalent status. This is a primarily a configuration decision, but on Microsoft Windows systems the default configuration is to over-privilege the user. This situation exists due to decisions made by Microsoft to prioritize compatibility with older systems above security configuration in newer systems. As privilege escalation exploits have increased this priority is shifting for the release of Microsoft Windows Vista. As a result, many existing applications that require excess privilege (over-privileged code) are expected to have compatibility problems with Vista.

Malware, running as over-privileged code, can use this privilege to subvert the system. Almost all currently popular operating systems, and also many scripting applications allow code too many privileges, usually in the sense that when a user executes code, the system allows that code all rights of that user. This makes users vulnerable to malware in the form of e-mail attachments, which may or may not be disguised.

Given this state of affairs, users are warned only to open attachments they trust, and to be wary of code received from untrusted sources. It also common for operating systems to be designed so that device drivers need escalated privileges, while they are supplied by more and more hardware manufacturers, some of whom may be unreliable.

Eliminating over-privileged code

Over-privileged code dates from the time when most programmes were either delivered with a computer or written in-house, and repairing it would at a stroke render most anti-virus software almost redundant. It would, however, have appreciable consequences for the user interface and system management.

The system would have to maintain privilege profiles, and know which to apply for each user and program. In the case of newly installed software, an administrator would need to set up default profiles for the new code.

Eliminating vulnerability to rogue device drivers is probably harder than for arbitrary rogue executables. Two techniques, used in VMS, that can help are memory mapping only the registers of the device in question and a system interface associating the driver with interrupts from the device.

Other approaches are:

  • Various forms of virtualization, allowing the code unlimited access only to virtual resources
  • Various forms of sandbox or jail
  • The security functions of Java, in java.security

Such approaches, however, if not fully integrated with the operating system, would reduplicate effort and not be universally applied, both of which would be detrimental to security.

Academic research on malware: a brief overview

The notion of a self-reproducing computer program can be traced back to 1949 when John von Neumann presented lectures that encompassed the theory and organization of complicated automata [Ne49]. Neumann showed that in theory a program could reproduce itself. This constituted a plausibility result in computability theory. Fred Cohen experimented with computer viruses and confirmed Neumann's postulate. He also investigated other properties of malware (detectability, self-obfuscating programs that used rudimentary encryption that he called "evolutionary", and so on). His doctoral dissertation was on the subject of computer viruses [Co86]. Cohen's faculty advisor, Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) presented a rigorous proof that, in the general case, algorithmically determining whether a virus is or is not present is Turing undecidable [Ad88]. This problem must not be mistaken for that of determining, within a broad class of programs, that a virus is not present; this problem differs in that it does not require the ability to recognize all viruses. Adleman's proof is perhaps the deepest result in malware computability theory to date and it relies on Cantor's diagonal argument as well as the halting problem. Ironically, it was later shown by Young and Yung that Adleman's work in cryptography is ideal in constructing a virus that is highly resistant to reverse-engineering by presenting the notion of a cryptovirus [YY96]. A cryptovirus is a virus that contains and uses a public key. In the cryptoviral extortion attack, the virus hybrid encrypts plaintext data on the victim's machine using the virus writer's public key. In theory the victim must negotiate with the virus writer to get the plaintext back (assuming there are no backups). Analysis of the virus reveals the public key, not the needed private decryption key. This result was the first to show that computational complexity theory can be used to devise malware that is robust against reverse-engineering.

Another growing area of computer virus research is to mathematically model the infection behavior of worms using models such as Lotka-Volterra equations, which has been applied in the study of biological virus. Various virus propagation scenarios have been studied by researchers such as propagation of computer virus, fighting virus with virus like predator codes [ToKa02], virus war- fighting between worms [TaKh06], effectiveness of patching etc.

Emerging vectors and pathways

Wikis and Blogs

Innocuous wikis and blogs are not immune to hijacking. It has been reported that the German edition of Wikipedia has recently been used as an attempt to vector infection. Through a form of social engineering, users with ill intent have added links to web pages that contain malicious software with the claim that the web page would provide detections and remedies, when in fact it was a lure to infect.[1]

Targeted SMTP Threats

Targeted SMTP threats also represent an emerging attack vector through which malware is propagated. As users adapt to widespread spam attacks, cybercriminals distribute crimeware to target one specific organization or industry, often for financial gain.[2]

See also

  • Computer insecurity
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM)
  • Firewall (networking)
  • Social engineering (security)
  • Spy software
  • Targeted threat
  • Vulnerability (computing)

References

  1. ^ Wikipedia Hijacked to Spread Malware
  2. ^ "Protecting Corporate Assets from E-mail Crimeware," Avinti, Inc., p.1
  • [Ne49] John von Neumann, "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata", Part 1: Transcripts of lectures given at the University of Illinois, Dec. 1949, Editor: A. W. Burks, University of Illinois, USA, 1966.
  • [Co86] Fred Cohen, "Computer Viruses", PhD Thesis, University of Southern California, ASP Press, 1988.
  • [Ad88] L. M. Adleman, "An Abstract Theory of Computer Viruses", Advances in Cryptology---Crypto '88, LNCS 403, pages 354-374, 1988.
  • [YY96] A. Young, M. Yung, "Cryptovirology: Extortion-Based Security Threats and Countermeasures," IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, pages 129-141, 1996.
  • [Ze03] Zeltser, L, Skoudis, E, Stratton, W. O., Teall, H, "Malware: Fighting Malicious Code", Prentice Hall, 2003.
  • [ToKa02] H. Toyoizumi, A. Kara. Predators: Good Will Mobile Codes Combat against Computer Viruses. Proc. of the 2002 New Security Paradigms Workshop, 2002
  • [ TaKh06] Zakiya M. Tamimi, Javed I. Khan, Model-Based Analysis of Two Fighting Worms, IEEE/IIU Proc. of ICCCE '06, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2006, Vol-I, Page 157-163.

External links

  • eWEEK's Topic Center - Anti-spyware
  • Non-profit Malware Process Library
  • The latest news and information about Anti-spyware
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware"