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Computer Viruses and Malware Essay

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INTRODUCTION

Two of the common known attacks on computing systems are the deployment of computer viruses and malware.

Computer viruses are minute program which is “embedded inside an application or within a data file which can copy itself into another program“(Adams et al, 2008 ) for the sole determination of meddling with normal computer operations. The consequences may range from corruption and deletion of data; propagation of virus on to network and deployment through attachments through emails in order to further creating havoc to all associated computing devices.

Malwares are mischievous programs crafted to agitate or forbid normal operations to gather selected information which may lead to loss of privacy through …show more content…

This scripting language is also increasingly being used as an attack mechanism by predators that exploit vulnerabilities within the client’s web browser; unpatched software or other JavaScript based applications for mounting their attack (Karanth et al, 2011). The assailant commonly obtains the information for identify theft and for personal financial gains (Wadlow, 2009).

The methods which the adversary employs may vary from:
1. Zero Day Exploits where the assailant discovers a flaw ahead of the security community in raises the defense (Wadlow, 2009).
2. Injection Attacks where the attacker deposits the scripts into a web request to execute at the client-end (Wadlow, 2009).
3. Cross site vulnerability due to poorly validated coding in JavaScript and DOM (Karanth et al, 2011)
4. XSRF (“Cross site Reference Forgery”) where the victim client is redirected to a webpage that simulates the legitimate site (Wikipedia, 2011)
5. Phishing is where the gullible user is brought to a simulation of the actual site but with a minor difference. Example: “google.com and googIe.com, (where the lowercase l has been replaced by an uppercase
I ‘eye’)” (Wadlow, 2009).
6. Cookie snatching is when the session cookies are extracted from the client’s browser unawares (Wadlow, 2009).
7. Clickjacking is when the unaware user is playing a web game which is overlaid with an e-commerce interface. By clicking on the

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