Methods and Technologies for Protection Against Malware | Free Antivirus

To protect against malicious programs and computer fraud, there are various methods of combating them. These are legal (police), educational and technical methods.

All computerized countries have laws prohibiting the creation and distribution of viruses and other types of malware. Also, often the actions of Internet criminals fall under completely non-computerized articles of the criminal codes - for example, fraud, extortion, illegal access to confidential information, etc. These laws are regularly applied in practice. Thus, in 2004-2006, several hundred people were arrested all over the world for committing crimes with the use of computer technologies. However, it should be admitted that often such crimes are committed by technically competent specialists, and this rather seriously complicates the investigation of the crime. Plus, most of the criminal attacks remain out of sight of the police - due to their relative insignificance.

The second important method of protection against computer intruders is the education of users, understanding and strict adherence to the basic rules of behaviour on the network. In total, three basic rules are true for both home and corporate users:

Mandatory use of anti-virus protection. If you are not an expert in computer security, then reliable anti-virus protection and protection against network attacks (firewall) will protect you best of all - entrust your security to professionals. Most modern free antivirus programs protect against a wide variety of computer threats - viruses, worms, Trojans, and ad systems. Integrated security solutions also put a filter against spam, network attacks, visits to unwanted and dangerous Internet resources, etc.

Do not trust all information that comes to your computer - emails, links to websites, messages to Internet pagers. You should definitely not open files and links coming from an unknown source. Even if the message was received from a well-known source (from a friend or work colleague), but the sent file or link comes unexpectedly for you, it is better to ask again about the authenticity of the message, since the return address in e-mail is easily forged. 

The risk of infection is also reduced by using "organizational measures".

a ban on the use of Internet pagers;

access to only a limited number of web pages;

physical disconnection of the internal network of the enterprise from the Internet and the use of dedicated computers for Internet access;

and so on.

Unfortunately, severe restrictive measures can conflict with the wishes of each specific user or with the business processes of the enterprise - in such cases, a balance must be sought, and in each case, this balance may be different.

Pay enough attention to information from antivirus companies and computer security experts. They usually promptly report new types of online fraud, new virus threats, epidemics, etc. - pay more attention to such information.

An example of successfully repelling malicious attacks is the story of the LoveLetter mail worm and its numerous clones. Immediately after the outbreak of the worm, almost all antivirus companies published recommendations on how to protect against this type of mail worms - just do not open attachments with the VBS file name extension (this is how this worm spread). As a result, despite numerous clones of this worm and other variations on the theme of VBS worms, none of them caused an epidemic comparable in scale to LoveLetter.

However, there are cases when reports of new virus incidents do not fully correspond to the real level of threat. Often, trivial email worms disguise themselves as hot news about some notable event, for example, about football championships, natural or technological disasters, “terrorist # 1 has been arrested” and the like. Some antivirus companies sometimes advertise this as the main topic of the day and fan the hype around a minor event. Alas, if at this moment there is no more “hot” news, then such messages get into newspapers and news programs and actually misinform users. Such messages should be treated quite critically. An example of such advertising hype is a story that happened in late 1999. Unknown hackers reported that in the New Year they plan to launch hundreds of thousands of new viruses into the network. The opinion of antivirus companies and experts was mixed. Some of them helped to inflate the sensation, the rest calmed users, arguing that there were no prerequisites for an Internet disaster (which never happened).

The above three rules of computer hygiene can be summarized as follows: be sure to defend yourself, trust no one, but you can (with reservations) antivirus companies. And more about anti-virus protection.