Ethical Hacking: Worm, Virus & Trojan Horse Some of the skills that hackers have are programming and computer networking skills. They often use these skills to gain access to systems. The objective of targeting an organization would be to steal sensitive data, disrupt business operations or physically damage computer-controlled equipment. Some of the ways that … Read more
A Trojan can be detected in many ways. Port scanning, which can prove very effective if you know what to look for. Because a Trojan is used to allow access through backdoors or covert channels, a port must be opened to allow this communication. A port scan using a tool such as Nmap reveals these … Read more
Creating a virus is a process that can be very complicated or something that happens with a few button clicks (see Exercise 1). Advanced programmers may choose to code the malware from scratch. The less savvy or experienced may have to pursue other options, such as hiring someone to write the virus, purchasing code, or … Read more
Modern viruses come in many varieties: ■ A system or boot sector virus is designed to infect and place its own code into the master boot record (MBR) of a system. Once this infection takes place, the system’s boot sequence is effectively altered, meaning the virus or other code can be loaded before the system … Read more
A virus represents the oldest form of malware and is by far the best known to the public. But what is a virus? What separates a virus from other forms of malware? How is a virus created, and how does it target its victim? This section explores these questions and how they affect you, the … Read more
Public libraries, Internet cafes, and other customer-serving establishments have their own computers that customers may use to access the Internet. Are these computers safe for you to use? Tales abound of public-access computers infected with viruses, spyware, and even key loggers, many deliberately planted there in order to elicit information from unsuspecting users. I recall … Read more
Viruses are written in assembly language. High level languages like Basic, C, and Pascal have been designed to generate stand-alone programs, but the assumptions made by these lan- guages render them almost useless when writing viruses. They are simply incapable of performing the acrobatics required for a virus to jump from one host program to … Read more
Every viable computer virus must have at least two basic parts, or subroutines, if it is even to be called a virus. Firstly, it must contain a search routine, which locates new files or new areas on disk which are worthwhile targets for infection. This routine will determine how well the virus reproduces, e.g., whether … Read more
Computer viruses can be classified into several different types. The first and most common type is the virus which infects any application program. On IBM PC’s and clones running under PC-DOS or MS-DOS, most programs and data which do not belong to the operating system itself are stored as files. Each file has a file … Read more