Cyber Security Publishing

Adware is advertising delivered directly to your computer. Generally, a program puts ads on the screen at some regular interval. In some cases, this program can be installed without the user’s knowledge, but not always. Many programs clearly state on install that “this program is supported by advertising, and if you turn off the advertising, you also shut down the program.” Adware tends to be a “ grey area ” in the malware family. Yes, it can run without the user’s knowledge, and yes, it can bog down the system (especially when the adware program goes online to retrieve new ads to display). At the same time, adware is generally more open about what it does, giving the user the choice to install the program the adware is attached to. Adware is most often tied into Internet Explorer somehow. The ads that appear are browser windows. When it’s installed above-board, adware is generally accepted by the internet community as a valid marketing system, even though it can include elements of sp...

Do you know what goes on under the hood of your car? Do you know the solution for a warning light on the dash? Do you know what’s wrong with the car if it starts making strange noises or loses power? Those same questions can be asked about your computer. Computers can have many of the same problems as cars. Engine problems can cause cars to lose power, just like a large program can take up too much of the computer resources for anything else to run. Where an engine could “throw a rod” or “break a timing chain,” computers can mysteriously reboot or die with the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.” We expect that our car will bog down sometimes. You can’t expect a car to perform as well when pulling a two-ton trailer up a five degree hill. Likewise, when a computer gets bogged down with a big project, you would expect it to respond a little slower. What you don’t expect is for either the car or the computer to bog down or die when we’re not pushing so hard. One of the things that “Malware” ca...

Imagine a program that watches your computer. It sits in memory, watching everything the computer does–the websites it displays, the passwords used to get into them, the advertisements that get clicked on. This program silently and secretly gathers all of this information, without the user’s knowledge. Then, at some point, it connects to a server somewhere on the Internet, and hands over this collection–again, without letting the owner of the computer know what it’s done. Scary thought? Experts believe that at least six out of ten perhaps as many as nine out of ten computers on the Internet have this kind of malware installed. Like a virus, many spyware programs run without the user’s consent or knowledge. There is an entire industry devoted to gathering demographics information through the use of spyware, and there is another industry that’s grown to combat spyware. Spyware is meant to capture “demographics.” This is meant to help advertisers better target their ads. For example, if a...

Computer Viruses are one of the biggest “bogeyman” of the Internet, and with attacks by Melissa, ILoveYou, Nimda, and Michelangelo, there are damage estimates and virus warnings all over the Internet. But what are they really? A virus is a program that spreads to other computers. Like all forms of malware, it both runs without the user’s knowledge or permission and it can interfere with other programs that are trying to run on the same computer. Some viruses also carry a payload, like ticking time bombs. On a given date, or after a certain time after the computer is infected, the virus will “trigger.” This trigger can damage files, erase drives, or attack other systems over the Internet. Viruses have two major goals. First, they need to be run and installed on the infected computer, and two, they need to spread to other computers. And they need to meet these two goals without alerting the owner of the computer. There are a wide variety of ways for a virus to infect a system. Many early...