#Network worm virus download software#
#Network worm virus download code#

There are a wide range of potential attack techniques that malware can use to achieve its goals. and Israel to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, while NotPetya may have begun as a Russian cyberattack on Ukrainian computers that quickly spread beyond its intended targets (including back into Russia). In fact, two high-profile malware waves were almost certainly started by national intelligence services: Stuxnet was created by the U.S. Hactivists might use malware in their campaigns against companies or governments, and state-sponsored hackers create malware as well. Malware can also be part of a politically motivated attack. They could be looking for banking passwords or access to secrets they can sell or exploit, or they also could be looking to gain control of your computer and use it as a launching pad for a DDoS attack. While some hackers might create malware as an intellectual exercise or for the thrill of destruction, most cybercriminals are motivated by straightforward financial gain. Malware can also send back information about sensitive data to its creators. Once malware is executing on your computer, it can do a number of things, ranging from simply making it unusable to taking control out of your hands and putting your remote attacker in charge. Malware can also be installed on a computer 'manually' by the attackers themselves, either by gaining physical access to the computer or using privilege escalation to gain remote administrator access. Once it's running, one of its first jobs is to propagate itself, so it might hijack your email client and send out more copies of itself to potential victims.

#Network worm virus download code#

Often trojans arrive as email attachments with names like 'salary.xls' or 'resume.doc', with the malicious code lurking as a Microsoft Office macro. A trojan is a program that cannot activate itself but masquerades as something the user wants and tricks them into opening it via social engineering techniques.

#Network worm virus download software#

But the virus code is lurking inside programs that look legitimate, so there are other vectors by which it could it spread: if a hacker can infect an application at the source, an application that includes virus code could be available for download from open source repositories, app stores, or even the software maker's own servers. The infected program propagates itself in some of the same ways that a worm does, by searching for vulnerabilities on other computers it can reach via the internet or a local network.

A virus is a piece of computer code that inserts itself within the code of another standalone program, then forces that program to take malicious action and spread itself.

Some of the very first worms were designed to copy themselves to floppy disks and other removable media, then copy themselves again when that disk was inserted into a new computer, but today most worms scan for vulnerable computers connected to their host via a corporate network or the internet. Worms' creators build in knowledge of operating system vulnerabilities, and a worm program seeks these out on computers that it can reach from wherever it's running and makes copies of itself on those insecure machines.

A worm is a standalone piece of malicious software that reproduces itself and spreads from computer to computer.

In fact, the terms describe three different kinds of malware, which are distinguished from each other by the process by which they reproduce and spread. You've probably heard the words virus, trojan, and worm used interchangeably. How does malware spread and get on your device? This means that the question of, say, what the difference is between malware and a virus misses the point a bit: a virus is a type of malware, so all viruses are malware (but not every piece of malware is a virus). The key point is that malware is identified as such based on its intended malicious use, not a particular technique or technology. Malware, short for malicious software, is a blanket term for viruses, worms, trojans and other harmful computer programs attackers use to wreak destruction and gain access to sensitive information.