Addware & How Your Machine Can Get Infected.

 

Part 3: A summary of common methods of infection

Considering that over 90% of computers connected to the internet are infected with some form of spyware, there is no doubt that this is a serious problem. Many people wonder how exactly spyware does get on your computer, because we never intentionally download it, and yet it is still extremely common.

In order to protect yourself, you need to know how exactly it gets downloaded on your machine.

Infection through direct downloads:

First off, you can get infected through direct downloads. This is where you download a .exe file, run the file and get infected. Most commonly, spyware is bundled with popular, more legitimate programs.

Unethical companies who make malicious software will either do deals with other software developers to include their spyware in their software, or else they will bundle their spyware into the program without the legitimate software developer even knowing. You therefore need to be careful about downloading any file from the internet, because you never know if it could be bundled with spyware.

Infection through exploits:

Secondly, spyware can infect your machine through exploits in your web browser, most commonly internet explorer. So called "zero days" are discovered by hackers, which is where a serious exploit is found, that can be used as a backdoor to do something malicious.

Exploits that become widespread are patched and fixed when the next addition of internet explorer comes out, but until then, your machine will be highly vulnerable to exploits. When you are infected this way, you will often not even know that your computer has become infected, and the spyware will run in the background.

Infection through visiting malicious websites:

Similar to exploits, when you are infected this way, you will often be unaware that anything has even happened to your computer until you start getting spammed or pestered by annoying pop-up advertisements. There are many websites that will infect your PC just by you going to their site.

Owners of these websites drive traffic to their site by a number of ways. A common way is through spamming several million email addresses, with a link to their site promising some kind of "honey pot" offering. When unsuspecting readers click on the link to visit the site, they are instantly infected.

Other ways involve misspelled domains of popular websites (an example is google.com which is a typo on Google, and infects the user with all kinds of malicious software), or through buying traffic through pop-up advertisements.

In order to keep your machine clean, you need to be wary of the above three things. Make sure to check what you download, and only download reputable software that you know is clean from spyware. Keep your version of internet explorer and Firefox up to date, and also remember never to click on links in emails if you do not know the sender.