[MART] - Daily Diary #330 - Malware Types - Virus and Worms

[CTAS-MAT]

Hello,

I hope everyone is doing well!

Below is the entry for today.

08/19/2021 - Diary entry #330:


In this Daily Diary we will continue the thread started on our Daily Diary #328. Today we will talk about Virus and Worms. Virus is a popular term for malware. It's not uncommon to hear someone say their computer is infected with a virus, when in fact it's another type of malware.


In fact, Virus represents a very specific type of malware, the ones with the ability to spread by making copies of itself and becoming parts of other programs and files. A popular example of Virus is shortcut viruses, like Jenxcus. When you attach a removable drive in a computer infected with Jenxcus, it will hide all the files in the drive and replace them with a shortcut. This shortcut, when opened in a different device, will infect it with a copy of same Virus, that will infect every other removable drive inserted, and so on.


Worms are also a very popular type of malware, and commonly mistaken for Viruses. Worms have the same goal, to spread fast and infect as many devices as it can before being detected. The difference between worms and viruses is basically the way they spread: worms spread through the network, exploiting vulnerabilities in other machines or routers.


Both worms and viruses may seem a purposeless type of malware, as just spreading without making damage seems pointless. It's important to keep in mind that we can categorize a single piece of malware in more than one type. For instance, the WannaCry Ransomware, famous in 2017 after infecting a huge number of devices, can be categorized as both a Ransomware and a Worm, as it spread through the network by exploiting a Windows SMB vulnerability before encrypting the devices and demanding a ransom payment.

Kind Regards,

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Felipe Tarijon de Almeida
Malware Analyst
Appgate

E: felipe.tarijon at appgate.com<mailto:felipe.tarijon at appgate.com>
O: +55 11 97467 9549

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