Trojans, worms, viruses and spyware…what it all means!

Hey everyone, this is Adam with Call That Girl.  I decided to do my first blog about virus’s, worms, Trojans, and all those other nasty programs that slow down your computer.  To a lot of people all those words mean the same thing, but there are actually distinct differences between them, and that’s what I’m here to clear up.

 Virus:

 Most people call anything that ‘infects’ your computer a virus.  Although that is true to an extent, there are some minor details that are overlooked.  Firstly a virus wont go out of its way to infect a computer.  You must download and run a virus manually.  That’s not to say that Virus makers aren’t getting sneaky, and finding clever ways to make you run their virus.  Many virus’s are hidden in ‘free’ online downloads of games (poker), music (Limewire), pictures (Facebook) or other such ‘freebies’ (screensavers).  Best way to avoid them is to understand that nothing online comes ‘free’.  If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.  The other big distinction with virus’s is once you are infected, they will start to infect other files or drives on your computer.  For example if you get a virus, it could start to infect your word files (or any other type of file) making it so anytime you send someone a word file and they open it on their computer, they will get infected as well.

 Worm:

Worms are similar to virus’s, but with one minor difference..  A worm will spread itself with absolutely no human interaction.  Once you get a worm it will attempt to spread to other computers by whatever means possible.  This is why you often hear about the worm that will e-mail itself to your entire contact list in your e-mail.  E-mail isn’t the only way they spread however.  Many will simply infect your computer, than look for other computers near by and infect them as well.

Trojans:

Computer Trojans are similar to the Trojan Horse that the Greeks used to defeat the Trojans.  A Trojan is a malicious program that hides itself as a legitimate program.  One very common program they like to disguise themselves as is anti-virus programs.  Many people will go Google ‘Free Anti-virus’ then just download the first thing they find.  This is a very bad habit, and actually often times ends up with you installing a Trojan on your computer.  These fake anti-virus programs will say they are scanning your computer, but they actually just report a bunch of fake infections, then ask you to ‘purchase’ the program.  This is their attempt to get you to enter banking information.  Trojans are also commonly used by hackers to collect ‘zombie computers’ for their botnets (More on that in a future blog).

Adware/Spyware:

Adware and Spyware are becoming very common on computers now days.  Adware and Spyware are very similar to each other, and often times one program will perform the options of both.  Adware is a program that opens, plays, or otherwise displays advertisements.  Not to be confused with internet pop-ups which are simply ad’s placed on websites your browsing.  Adware ad’s will also open when your offline, even when your not using the computer at all!  Spyware is a program that will monitor what you look at online, and will report it back to whoever made the Spyware.  They will then turn around and sell that information to marketing companies.  You can see how these programs often go hand and hand.  These programs are often bundled in with other programs that you download.  Many search bars that you can get online have some form of Adware/Spyware built in.  My recommendation is to never download/use any search bar you find online, no matter who made it.

These are just some basic guidelines to the differences between all these malicious files.  The people who make these files are starting to get more clever, and are now starting to blur the lines between them.  I have seen Virus’s that spread like worms, and Trojans with Adware/Spyware inside, making it difficult to classify many of today’s Malicious files into concrete categories.

That’s it for today, check back later for more blog posts from your friendly Tech Intern.

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