Simple Way of Understanding a Malware Attack
While discussing computer and cybersecurity, people often repeatedly use a few words such as ransomware, spyware, malware, etc. sometimes more than the traditional word “virus” everywhere around the world. Is spyware, ransomware, malware etc. more dangerous than the traditional virus? Whether virus still exists around us and what is a virus after all? It is necessary to understand about the virus in order to understand about the malware, spyware and malware. You can easily understand about computer virus if you understand the original biological virus which creates numerous diseases in the body. The biological virus makes you sick by injecting its own DNA or RNA code. As the DNA code of the virus is injected into the host cell, the host cell generates many copies of the virus and then they burst out in the host cell reaching to countless host cells and other parts of the body.
The computer virus performs the same way as the biological virus functions in the body. The computer virus enters to the computers through various means and ways, and ultimately spread across different files and programs, and infect the entire computer systems. Sometimes, the generated viruses are different than the original virus and become more powerful than the original virus, and often difficult to eliminate using antivirus software. Though the functions of virus and malware are somewhat similar, they are different from each other. Both virus and malware are malicious software through which the attackers gain access to the computer or other internet-enabled devices and take control of the system. But modern malware, spyware and malware come in disguise through different types of emails and have the capacity of spreading to other computer and networks as well as other internet-enabled devices.
The malware used by the hackers specifically has certain types of purposes such as making money by stealing the important, financial, confidential and sensitive information and data of the victims.One of the basic purposes of a malware attack is to get the financial information like online banking login username and passwords, credit card numbers and passwords along with intellectual property information etc. This type of gaining sensitive information from the victims by the malware attackers is called “data theft.” By data theft, the attackers gain the bank information of the victim and use them for various types of criminal activities such as physical stealing of money from the account, digitally perform illegal money laundering, and sell the financial information of the victim to other cybercriminals.
