The Outbreak Of Malware

Malware
Once inside a computer, a malware outbreak can spread with alarming speed via company networks to compromise or destroy mission-critical data or personal information, and leave vital infrastructure open to new attacks. Some of the stealthiest malware even allows intruders to secretly conduct their nefarious business over long periods--using your computers.

In other cases, employees can open the door to malware by visiting infected Web sites, opening e-mail attachments, or running macros that contain viruses. There are a number of malware removal utilities that are either malware themselves or have convenient blind spots for particular pieces of malware. It is often very difficult to determine if a program is going to install malware; however, it is always a good idea to do a little research (perform a Google search for "Kazaa Malware," for instance) before you install a program. Opening suspicious email attachments: Many types of malware use email as their method of distribution.

Malware
It is always a bad idea to open attachments from people you do not know; however, newer types of malware can even "spoof" the "From:" address of an email, so you also want to be wary of emails from anyone if it contains attachments. It is easier to hit "Yes" to all of those boxes without looking at them; however, these popups often contain requests to install malware on your system. Not updating software: Using out-of-date, unpatched, software products can potentially open the door to exploits that can be used to install malware on your system. Now that you know some of the ways you can get malware, let's talk about tools you can use to remove it. It is important to remember that as malware becomes more sophisticated it becomes increasingly difficult to combat.

More recent strains of malware have begun to include countermeasures to disable popular protection tools or have functions that disable/replace aspects of a computer's operating system. What this means is that it will likely take a long time to fully clean your system if it is infected with malware, and that you can probably anticipate that some of the cleaning tools may not work the way you expect. There are many good tools to use to clean malware infections. Detection and removal of modern Rootkits are increasingly becoming frustrating as each time a detection/removal tool is updated; the rootkit authors also update their malware to avoid detection. Malware removal software allows you to detect and remove adware, spyware and various other types of malicious software.

There are a number of malware removal utilities that are either malware themselves or have convenient blind spots for particular pieces of malware.