CompTIA® Security+™: Study Guide, Fifth Edition

Surviving Malicious Code

Malicious code refers to a broad category of software threats to your network and systems, including viruses, Trojan horses, logic bombs, and worms.

Your users depend on you to help keep them safe from harm and to repulse these attacks. When successful, these attacks can be devastating to systems, and they can spread through an entire network. One such incident involved the Conficker worm that spread rapidly through PCs running Microsoft operating systems in late 2008. This is considered the largest worm infestation to date, and variants of it are still propagating through the Internet.

The following sections will briefly introduce you to the types of malicious code you’ll encounter. I’ll also explain the importance of ...