What Is Malware and How Can It Be Detected?
Whether it’s a computer virus or spyware, worms, Trojan horses, rootkits or adware, malware is software that performs some sort of malicious action. These programs are designed to harm a digital device or steal confidential information. They can be triggered by social engineering tactics, such as clicking on infected online ads, or by technical vulnerabilities that are exploited by threat actors to gain unauthorized access.
The first known example of a computer virus was Elk Cloner, which spread through infected floppy disks to Apple II systems in 1982. While these early viruses didn’t damage or destroy computers, they fit the modern definition of malware because they were unwanted intrusions.
Spyware, worms, botnets, and other types of malware are the main tools hackers use to carry out attacks. They can cause various issues, from slowing a system to disabling security features and changing settings. They can also encrypt and hold sensitive files or data hostage until the victim pays a ransom to get them back.
To detect malware, cybersecurity professionals use behavior-based detection that doesn’t just check for a list of known bad programs. It looks at how programs interact with one another and the operating system to see if they act suspiciously. This method can catch even brand-new zero-day exploits and other threats that haven’t been detected by legacy antivirus programs. Other signs of malware include a sudden loss of disk space or an unexplained swell in Internet activity that doesn’t correlate with a user’s behavior.