There are many types of malware software on the internet today. More specifically, we can split them into many categories, such as Viruses, Trojans, Worms, Ransomware and other programs that were designed with malicious intentions.
A malware is a malicious program (aka malicious software that wants to steal, destroy, or corrupt data stored on digital devices).
Many people use the generic term virus, which is not necessarily correct because there can be many types of dangerous programs. A small list of categories is:
Viruses
Trojans
Worms
Ransomware
Spyware
Adware
1. Viruses
A virus is a program of which we all heard at least once. Whether we had the computer infected with a virus or that we heard/seen someone else having trouble with one, we know that these viruses can be really dangerous for digital devices, and especially for the data stored on the computer – the most crucial element.
2. Trojans
A trojan is a type of program designed to appear useful for the one using it, but in the back-end there is a malicious code that has completely different intentions. These types of programs are most commonly found on the Internet and are used because they are easy to mask in front of an inexperienced user. So at the time of the initial setup of a program, the trojan is installed and will hide, doing its job “quietly.” The term Trojan comes from the story of the Trojan horse in Greek mythology.
3. Worms
A worm is a form of malware that once it infects a device (PC, laptop, server) will do its best to expand and infect others in the network. Thus, a worm manages to deteriorate the performance of network-connected devices (by consuming CPU and RAM resources) and even the network itself because infected computers will generate abnormal traffic.
4. Ransomware
An increasingly popular type of malware is the ransomware, whose purpose is to encrypt the victims HDD/SSD and request a cash ransom for the decryption key in the form of cryptocurrencies.
5. Adware
They are programs that once installed on a device (or in a browser) will start displaying annoying commercials.
6. Spyware
These are programs designed to extract specific data from infected users. They are not meant to hurt (by consuming resources) or affect the victim in any way, but merely retrieve data and send them to “a mother server” (those who initiated “the espionage”).
Malware protection
A malware protection strategy is to prevent malicious software from accessing the target computer. For this reason, antivirus software, firewalls, and other approaches are used to proactively protect against the introduction of harmful programs, in addition to checking the presence of malware and malicious activity and recovering after attacks.
Typically, anti-virus programs run automatically in the background and monitor for issues. When a virus is detected, the user is warned that the program is infected and will attempt to quarantine the virus or erase it.
Spyware Protection – Anti-spyware programs scan for keyloggers and other malware to remove them from your computer.
Adware Protection – Anti-adware programs are looking for apps that show ads on your computer and remove them.
Anti-phishing protection – Anti-phishing software blocks the known IP addresses of known phishing websites and alerts the user to suspicious websites.