Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Chapter 1. Introduction

The shrieking sound of my alarm clock startled me awake that morning. I had been having a strange dream in which computers controlled the world by creating a virtual reality simulation designed to imprison humans. Shaking off my dream, I prepared for another day at work. As usual, I groggily logged into my system to wade through the flood of e-mail that accumulates every night, looking for the real messages requiring urgent attention. While sorting through my e-mail, though, I realized my system didn't seem quite right. My computer was sluggish, not its usual snappy self.

I looked for aberrant programs sucking up extra CPU cycles, but found none that had gone awry. It was as though someone or something had snagged hundreds ...