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Denton Croft
I was asked what is spyware, adware, virus, Trojan horse, worm, and malware. The answers are:
Spyware is a program that monitors where you go on the web. This information is gathered by various companies and sold to anyone willing to buy it, and many companies are willing to buy it. The feeling is that where a user goes on the web is an indication of what they are planning to buy. Spyware is usually unobtrusive, but can interfere with your Internet access, sometimes completely blocking access to the Internet. Most spyware is poorly written.
Adware has various definitions, but generally it is software that puts advertisements on a computer screen. Unlike spyware, it is highly obtrusive. Sometimes it is placed on computers by e-mails received or web sites visited. Companies will often use the information obtained by spyware to determine which machines to put their adware on.
A virus is software that has only one purpose, to disable a computer. It is called a virus because it can replicate (copy) itself and infect other computers that users have contact with. "Contact with" meaning machines that users send e-mail to, machines on the same network as the user, machines that a user sends software to, etc. Virus is often (incorrectly?) used as a catchall term and includes any undesirable software on a computer. Malware is a more appropriate term.
Trojan horse is software that misrepresents itself as something else. One example is a small program that generates a login screen. The unsuspecting user will come back from lunch and see that he was logged off. So, without a thought, he types in his password and logs in again. The Trojan horse then sends his password to whoever installed the Trojan horse in the first place. In case you are wondering how the program gets installed on an unsuspecting user's machine, it is quite simple in an office environment. The perpetrator waits until the victim goes to lunch without logging out of his machine. The perpetrator plugs in a flash drive with the Trojan horse and installs it.
A worm is a program that also has only one purpose, to disable the network. The worm was first conceived by Robert Tappan Morris as a potential network problem. Basically Morris visualized it as a program that invades computers on the Internet. The program would replicate itself and invade other computers, ultimately sending massive amounts of data over the Internet and thereby bringing it down. To prove his point Morris released a worm like program on the network, the purpose being to find computers with weaknesses allowing it to be invaded. It would count the number of these computers and send the data back to Morris. Morris would then use the data to prove his point. UNFORTUNATELY there was a design flaw in his program and as a result it was not worm-like but a full fledged worm. OOPS. It brought down the Internet and thereby proved his point.
Malware? All of the above.
Doctor Morris is now a tenured professor at MIT and highly regarded by his peers. His followers (worshippers?) have been heard to say "he's never wrong." See Wikipedia.org.
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"Can You Guess Who This Is?”
Answer to April:
Adrienne
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