Malware is a generic term for bad software. Malware is malicious code downloaded to your computer, and it can give the attacker a truly alarming degree of control over your computer, network, and files - all without your knowledge. Malware is software written to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's consent. Malware is a combination of the words 'malicious' and 'software' and is a program written by someone with mischievous or, more usually, malicious intent.

Network

Trojan horses known as droppers are used to start off a worm outbreak, by injecting a worm into users' computer. A worm, on the other hand, is a program which actively transmits itself over the internet to infect other computers. One of the most common ways that spyware is distributed is as a Trojan horse, bundled with a piece of downloaded software that the user downloads from the web or a peer-to-peer file-trading network.

Most early malware programs, including the first worm and a great number of MS-DOS viruses, were written as test programs or pranks generally intended to be fun or merely annoying rather than to cause serious havoc. But, since the dawn of widespread broadband internet , more damaging software has been written for a profit motive. Software offering to speed up the internet will most likely contain spyware. Some malware is known to interrupt your internet connection or even make your PC to hang. Internet spyware, trojan horse programs, rootkits, pseudorootkits, keyloggers, hijackers, annoyware, email relays, adware, spam relays, scam downloads, email/spam robots and spam proxies are perhaps the worst security threat to users and institutional networks in existence.

Email

Email will continue to be an important delivery system for malware authors, though the increasing adoption of email server security is making malware authors turn to other ways for infection. Emailed malware is also looking more professional and people who assume they can identify any infected emails through bad spelling,bad grammar or suspicious subjects will be caught out. Be very careful about any attachments, specially those that you receive from unknown sources. You should also be careful with attachments from people you know. Never open any attachment you are not expecting , even if it appears to come from a co-worker ( you cannot spot malware by reading the text of a mail message, unless your patching is very out of date). By 2000, the growth of email gave malware a very effective infection route into new machines.

Malware is a catch-all term for various dangerous software, including adware, spyware and browser hijacking software. Malware is often included with 'spam' and avoiding "spam" will reduce your exposure . Malware is now being written for every possible OS (operating system), communications channel and businesses that do not update their systems religiously or fail to use protective software and internet protection will find themselves at risk of getting infected.

Any one not investing in security software, will eventually get infected. That's the hard truth! Maybe you are already infected... You may scan your PC for FREE here: SpywareRemover or AntiSpyware 2007.