6 Kaspersky
Anti-Virus
®
5.0 for Windows Workstations
frequency of their occurrence. Some malicious programs combine the properties
of two or even three of the classes mentioned above.
The following types of potentially dangerous software also became widely
spread:
•
AdWare
– software code for advertisement demonstration added into a
program without informing the users about that. As a rule, adware is built
into free software. The advertisement appears within the program inter-
face. Such programs frequently collect and transmit to their developers
some personal information about users, change various browser parame-
ters (home and search pages, security levels, etc.), generating additional
traffic, which users do not control. All of the above may cause violations of
the security policy or even direct financial losses.
•
Riskware
– software that does not have any harmful functions but may
be employed by intruders as an auxiliary component for malware pro-
grams because of the security breaches and errors it contains. The cate-
gory includes, for example, remote administration software, IRC clients,
FTP servers, various utilities used to terminate processes or hide their ac-
tivity.
•
SpyWare
– software designed for unauthorized access to user data,
tracking of actions performed on a computer, collection of information
about hard drive contents. Such tools allow an intruder to gather data or
even control a computer from outside. Spyware is usually distributed with
free software and deploy on a computer imperceptibly for its user. Spy-
ware category includes software tracking keyboard input, password crack-
ing tools, programs for collection of confidential data (e. g., credit card
numbers).
•
PornWare
– programs that establish charged modem connections to
various Internet sites, mostly with adult content.
•
Hack Tools
– software employed by intruders for their own purposes to
gain access to your computer. The category includes various illegal scan-
ners of vulnerabilities, password cracking tools, other types of software for
breaking into network resources or intrusion into an attacked system.
E-mail and the Internet act as the main sources for spreading virus infections and
malware, although infection may be caused by a floppy disk or a CD. This
situation reflects a shift of emphasis in anti-virus protection from simple regular
scanning of computers for virus presence to a more complex process of real-time
computer protection from a probable infection.
