Trojan Horses

When it comes to malware (rather than old stories), a Trojan horse, just like its mythological predecessor, is an item that appears completely harmless at a first glance. Often Trojan horses come in the shape of an interesting tool, game or other type of software. It is not until executed that Trojans (just like a worm) cause harm to your computer data, the computer system’s functional performance, or its networking throughput. In theory, a Trojan may be capable of almost any type or level of harm.

A Trojan may not always activate its effects at first, but can be set to activate after a certain number of uses. When they do activate, they can wreak havoc on your system by deleting files, destroying information on your hard drive and opening up a backdoor to your security system. This way, Trojans can get complete access to your system, making it possible for an outside user to remote control your computer, for example to copy and resend your confidential information.

Crimeware

Crimeware stands for all types of malware created to obtain money or confidential information. This includes hackers, Trojans, Phishing, and Spyware, to name a few.

These days, malware writers are no longer looking to experiment or to get “famous”, but have realized the possibilities when it comes to getting financial returns from their efforts. This means, you can no longer simply worry about your computer crashing, but your money and confidential information, or your entire identity, is at serious risk. Any person or company with access to the Internet could be attacked by crimeware at any time.

Crimeware programs are created in order to gather confidential information, such as your credit card numbers, passwords and more. They can also perform keylogging, i.e. register the keystrokes made on a computer, or take control of a computer and manage it remotely.

A few serious effects of crimeware are the following:

• Private data theft.
• Identity theft.
• Financial loss through theft of passwords for online services, e.g. your bank accounts.
• Privacy intrusion.
  
  

In order to protect yourself from crimeware, you need to make sure you are using a complete Internet security solution, such as Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security. Antivirus only is not enough, but you also need antispyware, firewall, as well as proactive technologies to detect unknown malware.

Rootkits

Rootkits is a type malware that is extremely hard to detect. It hides deep inside your operating system to avoid detection, making it almost invisible. Rootkits have become very common – as well as very dangerous – in the past couple of years.

What makes rootkits so dangerous is that they can be used as a way to get continuous access to a remote computer. This way, your computer can be accessed and controlled remotely. Rootkits can also hide the existence of other elements, e.g. computer viruses, from the user and in some cases even by the security software itself.

Internet Security products may work in a number of different ways to detect rootkits. This includes signature-based detection (the traditional method of detection used by antivirus companies) and heuristic detection (behavior-based detection, which finds rootkits by noticing a change in the computer’s normal activity). Because of the almost invisible nature of rootkits, several methods need to be combined.

Adware

Adware is software with an advertising purpose. It can use several different methods for displaying ads, for example pop-ups, banners, changes to the browser home page or search page, etc. It is important to note that even though Adware may be annoying, it is often not dangerous. In fact, adware often comes bundled with free software, as a way for the software developer to be able to provide their software for free. In cases like these, adware will be installed with the user's consent and knowledge.

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