Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

—The movie, The Fly, 1986

Bad guys' Trojan horse ruses aren't limited to just playing games with names. Many attackers also combine their malicious code with an innocuous program to create a nice, cozy-looking package. By grafting together two programs, one malicious and one benign, an attacker can more easily trick unsuspecting users or administrators into running or ignoring the combined result. When unsuspecting victims receive the combined package and run it, the malicious executable embedded in the package will typically run first. Of course, the vast majority of backdoors don't display anything on the screen, so the victim will not see anything during this step, which usually takes less than a second. ...