Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Types of Malicious Code

On that cheery note, we turn our attention to the multitude of malicious code categories available to attackers today. About a decade ago, when I first started working in computer security, I was overwhelmed at all of the avenues available to an attacker for squeezing executable instructions into a target machine. An attacker could shoot scripts across the Web, overflow buffers with executable commands, send programs in e-mail, overwrite my operating system, tweak my kernel … all of the different possibilities boggled my mind. And the possibilities have only increased in the last 10 years. Each mechanism used by the bad guys for implementation and delivery of malicious code is quite different, and requires specific understanding ...