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Exterminate those Web Bugs and Stay Private One third of consumers online are browsing without security and 60 percent of wireless business networks are unencrypted, and we wonder why our computers are being infected. Internet bugs are infecting our computers and it is important to know about these infectious irritants and how we can protect our privacy.
One big culprit is a computer worm, which is a self-replicating computer program. This worm uses a network to send copies of itself to other computer terminals on the network called nodes, and it may do so without any user intervention. It does not need to attach itself to an existing program, which is unlike a virus. Worms always cause harm to your network, even by just consuming bandwidth. A virus will always infect or corrupt files on a targeted
computer.
These bugs are called a worm which comes from a science fiction novel called The Schockwave Rider and then the name was published in a paper by researchers John F Scoch and John A Hupp in 1982. They were the first to implement a worm and originally designed one to find idle processors on the network and assign them tasks, sharing the process load, and so improving the CPU cycle making the entire network more efficient.
The first worm that made it to the worldwide network was the Christmas Tree Worm, which spread across both IBMs own international network and BITNET in December of 1987 and almost completely disabled both networks. Another early worm on the internet, and the first to attract world wide attention was the Morris worm, which quickly infected large numbers of computers attached to the Internet and caused a massive disruption. Errors in its implementation caused it to not spread even further and cause more damage.
There are several different types of worms the first being and email worm. These spread via email messages and typically the worm will arrive as email, the body of the message containing the worm code, and sometimes it may link to code on an external website. Most of these email systems require the user to explicitly open an attachment to activate the worm, but social engineering can often successfully be used to encourage this. One example of this was the Anna Kournikova worm. Once it is activated, the worm will send itself out using either local email systems, or directly. The addresses it sends to are often gotten from the infected computers email system or files.
Another kind of worm is Instant Messaging worms. The way these little buggers spread is via instant messaging applications by sending links to infected websites to everyone on the persons contact list. The only difference between these and email worms is the way the links are sent.
IRC worms are the target of chat channels and the same infection and spreading method is used as with Instant Messaging worms. These work by sending infected files or links to infected websites. Infected file sending is less effective as the recipient needs to confirm receipt, save the file and open it before infection will take place.
There are other annoying worms such as file-sharing worms that copy themselves into shared folders, and Internet worms that directly target TCP/IP ports directly.
The most important way to protect yourself against these web bugs is by not being tricked into opening a suspicious email, and therefore exposing your privacy to attack. Make sure you install all your regular security updates and if a vender acknowledges a vunerability in their software be sure to download the patch to fix the problem.
Anti-virus and anti-spyware software are helpful, but must be kept up-to-date with new pattern files at least every few days. Never give out any of your personal information online, especially if you encounter one of these suspicious looking emails. That is the best way to protect your private information from these annoying web bugs.
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