WORMS AND VIRUS'S

My suggestion would be to go to www.symantec.com and read the descriptions of various viruses and worms to get a feel for them.

Mike's Cliffs Notes of terminology:
1. Virus... replicates by attaching itself to a portion of every file it infections. The code it attaches can do a variety of things.
2. Worm... replicates by exploiting holes in programs, OSes, etc, planting itself on the exploited system, and using that system to launch itself to other vulnerable systems it finds. Really clogs up network traffic to a point that the network becomes unusable. Read about the "Internet Worm" of 1988, created by the infamous RTM, for more info on how they work.
3. Trojan Horse... a seemingly innocent program (or program that you had no idea you installed) that creates a backdoor on your system, turning it into a server that can be accessed from the outside.
4. Logic bomb... term that has pretty much fallen completely out of use... its another name for any of the above that only starts working given a specified set of circumstances.

That should get you started...

 

MalWare and SpyWare - files that are malicious or spy on you and your habits. Not usually real viruses, but usually cookies, but can be more serious. Ad-Aware and Spybot can be the cure.

 

*thumbs up* see sig. =)

 

Hijacks - these are annoying DLL's that come over unbeknownst to you and take over your home page. No matter how many times you reset your home page, the DLL is programmed to reset your home page to some wacko link at a specified time. As frequent as every minute. Sometimes, a COM or EXE file is brought over to bring other havok from a remote site. The next thing you know your PC is taken over by pop ups and infested with spy ware logging your passwords, keystokes, where you went, etc. You run your spyware software thinking its going to kill it, but it finds nothing and your PC is still infested. Fortunately, its as easy as finding files created for the day and just deleting them. Some are stubburn and are in use and can't be deleted. You have to go into safe mode to kill them. Pain in the arse to clean up. Legit sites do not practice this type of online assult, but those foriegn-in the vast corner of the net type of sites do have this. For example, my friends find some funny links, but when they look like "mega10.ru.funstuff or superload2353.cz.jokester.shtml" I have to wonder what the heck they stumbled on and got themselves into.

 

www.cert.org is what we use in the industrt

 

CWShredder is very good at fixing the hijacks that take over your homepage.