US Malware Infections
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report Malicious Software (malware): a Security Threat to the Internet Economy (PDF file) says malware infects more than 25 per cent of US computers.
Malware is a general term for a piece of software inserted into an information system to cause harm to that system or other systems, or to subvert them for use other than that intended by their owners.
Malware can gain remote access to an information system, record and send data from that system to a third party without the user‟s permission or knowledge, conceal that the information system has been compromised, disable security measures, damage the information system, or otherwise affect the data and system integrity.
Different types of malware are commonly described as viruses, worms, trojan horses, backdoors, keystroke
loggers, rootkits or spyware. These terms correspond to the functionality and behaviour of the malware (e.g. a virus is self propagating, a worm is self replicating).
Experts usually group malware into two categories: family and variant. “Family” refers to the distinct or original piece of malware; “variant” refers to a different version of the original malicious code, or family, with minor changes.
Reading the report is a relatively quick way to get up to speed on the realities of malware and botnets.
(Credit for Graphics: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Read the report for all the details.
…John
