Today we cover the question of how viruses are spread and how you catch them. Upon actually sitting down to write, I remembered just how much needs to be conveyed when it comes to malicious software. So, we are going to spread this subject over several posts.
The first major way viruses spread is through security holes.
Security holes are what you read about most often in the news. Virus writers find holes in the programming of an operating system that allows malicious code to enter the system. Worms are the most common type of virus to use this method. The core purpose of worm is to replicate itself to other machines on a network. Remember that network also includes the Internet. It propagates itself by searching out other computers with the same security hole or emailing itself from the infected host. By itself, the normal results of a worm is the consumption of bandwidth. Basically it causes a traffic slowdown or Denial Of Service (DOS).
Few pure worms exist, normally they also have a payload attached to them. Recent ones of note are Nimda, Code Red and Code Red 2, and Sasser.
Botnets are often created thru worms. Botnets are infected machines where the payload allows remote control of the machine. Besides the normal bandwith consumption of replication as mentioned earlier, botnets become a zombie army of infected machines. An individual on a controller machine now has the ability to harness the power of thousands of machines to perform a specific task. A simple command can cause the controlled machines to email or send information packets at a specific target. Be a company, government agency, or Internet Service Provider. You can read more about Denial of Service and recent attacks here
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