Mad about Science: Malware

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

The internet is a little bit like the Wild West. There are a lot of rules out there, but a lot of folks don’t really follow them. Most people are just showing up to do their thing, checking their emails, watching a funny cat video, maybe setting up a shop and doing remote business. Then there are the lawless kind who go about causing havoc. 

Instead of shooting up saloons and kidnapping people to throw onto train tracks, these criminals want your personal information and financials; and, sometimes, their tactics can be really sneaky and advanced — at least to most people using the internet.

The line of what is really bad behavior can be difficult to accurately define on the internet. Malware, short for “malicious software,” is used by cybercriminals to gain access to or harm a computer system in some way. Interestingly, quite a bit of what malware accomplishes has also been adopted by legitimate entities to perform virtually identical actions. One of the major differences between an international cybercriminal and a multinational conglomerate collecting your data and selling it to the highest bidder is that you likely consented to the conglomerate performing this action — likely without even knowing what you were consenting to.

Who reads the “terms of service,” anyway? I just want my clicky game!

There’s lots of different kinds of malware out there, and many ways it’s introduced to a computer system or network. In the early 2000s, the term “malware” hadn’t quite entered the public lexicon and most casual internet users simply referred to malware as computer viruses. Many people today will still use this colloquialism, but in actuality a virus is a type of malware. A computer virus is a piece of code that will inject replications of itself into other programs and files on a computer. Its primary purpose is to spread like a biological virus. Often, the only purpose of this is to be a nuisance and slow down a computer’s operating system by eating up all its resources, but it can be used in conjunction with other software to create something that is extremely difficult to remove from a system. It’s a bit like playing whack-a-mole with computer code.

One of the most common types of malware seen in my profession is scareware. Library patrons using the public computers will often encounter scareware when browsing websites. Scareware uses pop-up advertisements to frighten a user into clicking on something, making them believe they’ve done something wrong and need to click on the seemingly legitimate prompt to fix it. This prompt actually injects malware into the system and makes the problem much worse.

Pro tip: If you’re afraid of clicking on anything, press ALT+F4 to close the window. These are usually just full-screen pop-ups prone to being closed by this hot key. Also don’t go back to that website — it has either been compromised or the owners are in on the scam.

A common result of this kind of software is a browser hijack. If you’ve noticed your search engine doesn’t default to something you recognize or your browser’s homepage is now some strange website you’ve never visited, this is a browser hijack. These are usually very easily remedied if you’re able to navigate to a legitimate search engine and look up the instructions for removing it. It’s usually just an automated process that changes your browser settings either as part of a software bundle or malware.

This often serves the secondary purpose of navigating you toward more malware, particularly spyware that sits on your system and collects your information. This can be anything from your browsing history and habits to sensitive information like passwords or even financial information that is then taken by criminals and sold online.

Many legitimate companies do this regularly, though there are certain parameters they aren’t allowed to break. It’s often built into a program’s terms of service to allow a company to collect your browsing information and web habits, which are then bundled up into big bulk data collections these companies sell to advertisers. Targeted ads feel like a violation of privacy because they are. Often, we’ve unknowingly consented to this violation, because what are we going to do, not listen to free music?

Of course, these companies have your financial information, too. Selling this information would not be good for building consumer trust, however, so they often won’t sell it. But they store it, and that makes them susceptible to phishing scams. Phishing is when a cybercriminal will pose as a legitimate resource from or for a major company with the intention of scamming them out of information. This may come as a threatening phone call or an urgent email with a link or attachment that will compromise a user’s system.

You’ve likely seen a phishing scam in some form, and you’ve maybe even been on the receiving end of one.

There may be times when you have tried to log onto your banking website, and the spiral of doom just keeps spinning forever. Eventually, it times out and you get frustrated because that parking ticket you got just doubled in the time it took to load your bank info. Major websites and services may be crashed by a dedicated denial of service, or DDOS attack. This is when a huge number of computers all try to access a single point at once, effectively forming a massive and overwhelming queue that bogs down the computer. The catch is, these aren’t actual users racing to get concert tickets, they’re computers with malware that have been infected across the world acting in unison called a botnet, and your computer could be contributing to the DDOS.

Good internet safety starts with good digital hygiene. Don’t click on links you don’t trust and be wary of strangers.

Stay curious, 7B.