Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Combo Malware

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean “bad”?Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instanta-                    neously and every molecule in your body exploding at the                    speed of light.

—Dialogue from the movie Ghost Busters, 1984

We've seen the various layers that malware can invade, ranging from the application to the kernel layer, and potentially even the microcode of the CPU itself. We've also witnessed a variety of malware propagation mechanisms, implemented in viruses, worms, and other forms of malicious mobile code. Earlier in this chapter, ...