Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

What's in a Name?

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.

—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1595

At the very simplest level of Trojan horse techniques, an attacker might merely alter the name of malicious code on a system so that it appears to belong on that machine. By giving a backdoor program the same name of some other program you'd normally expect to be on your system, an attacker might be able to operate undetected. After all, only the lamest of attackers would run malicious code using the well-known name of that code, such as Netcat or VNC. Don't get me wrong, however. If a really dim-witted bad guy attacks my system and uses techniques that I can easily spot, I'm all for it. That makes my job easier. I'm perfectly happy to catch any ...