Worms aren't
just for dogs anymore. Find out how to inoculate
your computer against these nasty parasites.
What Are Worms?
Worms are descended from viruses and are even nastier.
Just as ever stronger doses of pesticide breed ever
more resilient locusts, better and better anti-spyware
software bred ever more devious viruses.
Finally, some virus designers stopped having their creations
infect and take over files the way real viruses infect
and take over cells. Instead, they created programs
that could stand on their own and cause plenty of trouble
without the help of any other software applications.
Just worms are independent organisms that can infect
a host directly, so do computer worms infect computers
directly.
What Do Worms Do?
Worm designers are often even more sinister than virus
designers, since worm designers are not just vandals.
Worm designers often use their creations to achieve
specific goals:
Backdoor creation. Worms often try to set up
another kind of malware, a backdoor. A backdoor
is a hidden opening in your network connection that
lets the worm send data out and take data in.
Practically speaking, the data it's sending out are
often spam emails, and the data it takes in are instructions
on spam emails to send.
Denial of service attack. Some worm designers
really are vandals rather than profit-hungry con artists
sending spam. But their vandalism can be more
targeted. They use worms to send out numerous
requests to remote computers, such as web servers, in
order to overwhelm them and therefore shut them down.
This is called a denial of service attack.
Spyware, Trojan, adware, and virus installation.
Worms are often used simply to unleash other forms of
malware on a computer that might otherwise block them.
Information theft and fraud.Worms can multitask
in order to set up spyware that gathers sensitive information--often
financial information--and then set up backdoors, Trojans,
viruses, or dialers to disseminate the stolen data.
How Do Worms End Up on a PC?
Worms enter PCs just as viruses, spyware and other malware
do: any way they can! Some favorite points of
entry for worms:
Websites can actually download software to your
computer without you realizing it. This software
includes not only worms, but also spyware, adware, viruses,
and other malware. These malware programs find
their way into websites either by the deliberate design
of the site owner or because hackers have installed
the software on the website's server.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing networkscontain many
nice-enough-looking files that are really worms.
One of the sneakiest disguises is a filename that indicates
the spyware is really a video of a beautiful actress.
Email, the favored route of viruses, can still
be exploited by Spyware. But since new email programs
usually block the automatic opening of file attachments,
this is less of a problem than it used to be.
Any internet connection inevitably lets data
flow both in and out, and so is vulnerable to attacks
by worms.</ul>
How Do You Get Rid of Worms?
There's really only one good way to make sure your computer
is rid of worms: scan it with multiple antivirus and
anti-spyware programs using a full-system scan.
Worms are tricky, so anything less than a full-system
scan might let them escape. Worse, with new worms
coming out all the time, some antivirus and anti-spyware
packages may not even know about a new worm until after
its wreaking havoc on your machine. That's why
you should try using more than one antivirus program
and more than one anti-spyware program to increase your
odds of successfully detecting the malware.
Don't have more than one anti-spyware and antivirus
software? You'd better start downloading.
After all, worms won't take excuses.
About
the author: Joel Walsh writes for http://www.spyware-refuge.com/ about
worm removal http://www.spyware-refuge.com/?%20spyware%20anti%20virus |
