Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you So? On the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff news episodes, I often end up talking about stories
Speaker 1: involving malware, and I'm guessing you're all aware of malware
Speaker 1: at least to some degree. If you work for a
Speaker 1: company like mine, you'll hear about malware several times a month,
Speaker 1: as we have an extremely proactive I T security team
Speaker 1: that works hard to keep employees up to speed on
Speaker 1: the dangers of malware and the various tactics used to
Speaker 1: deliver payloads to targets. But I figure it's always good
Speaker 1: to do a quick rundown on different variations of malware
Speaker 1: and what they do. Now, keep in mind, well I'll
Speaker 1: be talking about broad categories. You can sometimes find examples
Speaker 1: of specific malware that kind of belonged to more than
Speaker 1: one type or category. And I'm really I'm using categories
Speaker 1: that are identified by Cisco because you have to take
Speaker 1: definitions from somewhere. But as it turns out, because of
Speaker 1: these similarities between different types, you can sometimes find other
Speaker 1: companies that will define them in a slightly different way,
Speaker 1: but I figure your Cisco is a pretty good authority
Speaker 1: to build this episode off of. Just keep in mind,
Speaker 1: if you do your own research, you might find variations
Speaker 1: on what we'll be talking about here. So starting off,
Speaker 1: before we even get into the different kinds, let's define malware,
Speaker 1: so that term is short for malicious software malware. Back
Speaker 1: in the early days of computing, I always just heard
Speaker 1: of viruses, and you know, viruses are a subcategory. There
Speaker 1: are a type of malware, and I actually to this
Speaker 1: day still have to focus to refer to malicious software
Speaker 1: as malware instead of just doing the lazy thing and
Speaker 1: calling them all viruses. Because when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and personal computers were first becoming a thing, that's what
Speaker 1: we referred to all malicious software. It was all of virus,
Speaker 1: partly because networking was not really a thing with personal
Speaker 1: computers in the early days. So anyway, old habits die hard.
Speaker 1: That's why I sometimes will still do it. But uh,
Speaker 1: as I said, we'll see that virus is one subset
Speaker 1: of malware. And because we're talking malicious software and not
Speaker 1: just cheeky programs that are meant to cause mischief. We
Speaker 1: typically will say that cyber criminals are the ones responsible
Speaker 1: for developing the software in the first place, and they
Speaker 1: may or may not be the same cyber criminals who
Speaker 1: actually distribute the malware. Now, many folks will use the
Speaker 1: word hacker to stand in for cyber criminal, but I
Speaker 1: object to that because it implies that hackers collectively are
Speaker 1: bad people. But if you'll forgive me a short tangent,
Speaker 1: I'd like to explain why that's not really the case.
Speaker 1: So the word hacker in the context of someone who
Speaker 1: works with code dates back to the late nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and early nineteen sixties at m i T the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology in other words, and it an originated
Speaker 1: of the college's Tech Model Railroad Club or t m
Speaker 1: r C. In fact, there's this humorous definition that Peter R.
Speaker 1: Sampson created for the term hack, which then could be
Speaker 1: extended to hacker. And the definition for hack, according to Sampson,
Speaker 1: is this hack something done without constructive end, a project
Speaker 1: undertaken on bad self advice, an intrope booster, or to
Speaker 1: produce or attempt to produce a hack. So noun and
Speaker 1: a verb, and I do not wish to put words
Speaker 1: into Mr Sampson's mouth, but I believe he may be
Speaker 1: using the word entropy here to specifically refer to a
Speaker 1: decline into general disorder. Anyway, the blossoming field of computer
Speaker 1: science took on hacker to mean people who were putting
Speaker 1: together code, sometimes fruitlessly, as they were trying to get
Speaker 1: a system to do something specific, Like they had a
Speaker 1: specific goal they were working toward, and they were hacking
Speaker 1: their way to getting that goal to come true. And
Speaker 1: you know, the early days of computer science there was
Speaker 1: a lot of trial and error when it came to
Speaker 1: writing code that could achieve a specific purpose. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of early programs that essentially did what they
Speaker 1: set out to do, but on careful review of the code,
Speaker 1: as as Jonathan Colton might say, it is not elegant, uh,
Speaker 1: and it does not really do the goal efficiently, and
Speaker 1: that you know, it's it's really a poorly programmed piece
Speaker 1: of code, except for the fact that it actually does
Speaker 1: achieve what it set out to do. Now, later on,
Speaker 1: the word hacker would be used to describe curious folks
Speaker 1: who just wanted to know how different technological stuff works, like,
Speaker 1: for example, how does a telephone network route calls. These
Speaker 1: hackers would explore technology and technological systems. They would learn
Speaker 1: all about the quirks of those pieces of tech, you know,
Speaker 1: what made them tick, and perhaps most importantly, how to
Speaker 1: make the tech do stuff it wasn't necessarily intended to do,
Speaker 1: Because there's something really satisfying about figuring out a way
Speaker 1: to achieve a result using tech that wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: built to do that thing. It I think it kind
Speaker 1: of taps into the same part of our brains for
Speaker 1: the people who really enjoy doing things like designing Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg devices. Those are those needlessly complex devices that are
Speaker 1: designed to carry out some uh trivially simple task. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the same thing that that pleases folks who
Speaker 1: really love Rube Goldberg devices is what pleases people to
Speaker 1: learn how the system works and then find ways to
Speaker 1: exploit it to do something different, not necessarily something bad,
Speaker 1: but different anyway. The word hacker really is more general
Speaker 1: than the specific use case of, you know, people who
Speaker 1: make malicious software, or even person who wants to infiltrate
Speaker 1: a secure system. There are hackers who fall into those subcategories,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't use hacker as a broad stroke brush
Speaker 1: to say person with malicious intent. Um, but frequently that's
Speaker 1: how we encounter the word in the media. And you know,
Speaker 1: language is fluid, Language does evolve, so it could very
Speaker 1: well be that I'm trying to hold back a flood
Speaker 1: and I should just accept that. Hacker effectively now means
Speaker 1: jerk face who wants to ruin your day, or maybe
Speaker 1: ruin your computer, or maybe the company you work for,
Speaker 1: or maybe the country you live in. It can get
Speaker 1: pretty scary. Now, one other thing before we start to
Speaker 1: dive into the categories. The folks who distribute malware are
Speaker 1: not necessarily the same folks who built the malware. They
Speaker 1: can be, but they don't have to be. There are
Speaker 1: malware programmers for higher out there. We could actually call
Speaker 1: them hacks, because one of the definitions of hack is
Speaker 1: a person who does you know, work for higher It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the gig economy, and often we associate
Speaker 1: it with someone who does, you know, like bare minimum
Speaker 1: quality work and does a lot of it in order
Speaker 1: to make a living. So like a hack, writer is
Speaker 1: someone who generates an awful lot of writing but isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily deeply concerned about the quality of their work. So
Speaker 1: we could refer to these malicious coders for higher as
Speaker 1: hackers in that sense, slightly different context from what we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. Now, these programmers go on to
Speaker 1: create malicious software and then frequently they will sell it
Speaker 1: on a dark market, like on the dark Web, where
Speaker 1: people are are looking for pieces of malware that they
Speaker 1: specifically want to use to target either a specific target
Speaker 1: or general target, and they have a specific goal that
Speaker 1: they want to achieve. Uh. Sometimes they'll even make a
Speaker 1: software available for free for distribution, but more often than
Speaker 1: not you'll find it as like a pay for tool,
Speaker 1: a weapon you can use in your arsenal. Now, often
Speaker 1: cyber criminals who purchase these pieces of malware will then
Speaker 1: go on to tweak that malware put their own spin
Speaker 1: on it. So very frequently we will find lots of
Speaker 1: variations of certain types of malware, and if you do
Speaker 1: a forensics investigation into the malware, you will discover that
Speaker 1: there are some common threads of DNA among different types
Speaker 1: of malware. That can also be useful because if there
Speaker 1: are common elements between different distributions of malware, it can
Speaker 1: be easier to scan for that malware and detect it
Speaker 1: before it does too much damage. Um, the more different
Speaker 1: a version is from its origin point, the more likely
Speaker 1: it is going to escape immediate detection. This is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why anti virus software, which we will
Speaker 1: talk about towards the end of this episode, is really
Speaker 1: important because we get new variations on old malware all
Speaker 1: the time, and if it's if it's a dramatic enough
Speaker 1: departure from the original piece of malware, your anti virus
Speaker 1: program may not pick up on it. So these things
Speaker 1: have to be you know, investigated and then updated frequently. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think we have laid all the groundwork we need
Speaker 1: to lay. When we come back, we're gonna start with
Speaker 1: the various types of malware and we'll we'll get it
Speaker 1: going with a good old computer virus. But first let's
Speaker 1: take this quick break, all right. As I said, we're
Speaker 1: going to start with the computer virus. So the heck
Speaker 1: is a virus within the context of malware. So a
Speaker 1: virus is a piece of malicious software that gloams onto
Speaker 1: a file that supports some form of macros like you know,
Speaker 1: most document files do this, and so this this malicious
Speaker 1: code is piggybacking on top of a file and it
Speaker 1: is like a virus inside of a host. The host
Speaker 1: in this case is the file that contains the malicious code,
Speaker 1: and when someone opens up that file that has the
Speaker 1: virus attached, it can activate the virus. So the file
Speaker 1: that you're opening appears to be legit or safe, but
Speaker 1: the malicious code that's within the the file then gets
Speaker 1: to run rampant on your machine. Now, the goal of
Speaker 1: your typical virus is to disrupt a computer system in
Speaker 1: some way. Now may do this by placing a very
Speaker 1: large demands on computer memory. So now your computer can't
Speaker 1: really run anything properly because it's memory is completely taken
Speaker 1: up by dealing with this virus. Or it might replicate
Speaker 1: itself and or otherwise replicate nonsense information and fill up
Speaker 1: your computer storage with garbage data. And it may even
Speaker 1: overwrite files so that you can no longer access key
Speaker 1: data or programs. That kind of thing. By the way,
Speaker 1: overwriting files, that's like scorched Earth policy, because if you
Speaker 1: delete a file, it doesn't actually leave your machine. The
Speaker 1: deleted file is essentially marked by your computer as this
Speaker 1: area of storage is now available, so we can write
Speaker 1: over it if we want to. But if you haven't
Speaker 1: overwritten anything. You can still retrieve deleted files. Overwriting files
Speaker 1: makes retrieval way more difficult. There are entire forensics companies
Speaker 1: out there that will take great strides to try and
Speaker 1: retrieve information from overwritten files, but it's very hard to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: A common feature of computer viruses is that they do
Speaker 1: self replicate. That is a pretty standard uh component of
Speaker 1: of computer viruses, and again they typically do that to
Speaker 1: kind of gum up with a computer with copies of itself. Okay,
Speaker 1: next up, let's talk about trojan's sometimes also called trojan viruses.
Speaker 1: They do share some similarities with your bog standard viruses
Speaker 1: that we just talked about. A trojan is malware disguised
Speaker 1: as a legitimate file or program. So maybe you are
Speaker 1: prompted to download a video player because you're trying to
Speaker 1: play some sort of online content online media, but you're
Speaker 1: getting a message saying, hey, you need to download this
Speaker 1: media player if you want to watch this. Well, in
Speaker 1: some cases, not in all of them. Sometimes this is
Speaker 1: a legitimate message, but frequently this is a tactic that
Speaker 1: criminals use to convince you to download a file that's
Speaker 1: acte a trojan that's housing malicious software. Back in the
Speaker 1: heyday of media piracy, there were lots of trojans disguised
Speaker 1: as useful programs, so everything from pirated video games, to
Speaker 1: productivity software suites, to even anti virus packages. Clever go
Speaker 1: you would go and say, Hey, I don't want to
Speaker 1: pay for this expensive piece of software, I'm gonna find
Speaker 1: it online for free. There was a chance that the
Speaker 1: free version you found was actually a trojan that was
Speaker 1: housing malicious software. Now, typically once a person downloads the
Speaker 1: trojan and then activates it, the trojan jumps in to
Speaker 1: get access to sensitive data on the computer or computer device.
Speaker 1: It might have some code that sends that data back
Speaker 1: to the jerks who distributed the malware in the first place.
Speaker 1: That kind of falls into another category we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a bit later. So in those cases, the militia software
Speaker 1: is collecting information that someone else should absolutely not have
Speaker 1: access to. Could be your personal information, could be stuff
Speaker 1: like your bank account, could be your medical records, could
Speaker 1: be any combination of these, could be everything on your computer.
Speaker 1: Really Now, something else that a trojan virus might have
Speaker 1: within it is what's called a root kit attack. So
Speaker 1: root kit it's attacking the root of your operating system
Speaker 1: and the purpose of this is to give a cyber
Speaker 1: criminal access to your machine, almost as if the cyber
Speaker 1: criminal was sitting down at your keyboard directly. And when
Speaker 1: a criminal gets administrative access to a computer, that's super
Speaker 1: bad news. It can also lead to the criminal not
Speaker 1: only just compromising one machine, but potentially launching attacks on
Speaker 1: connected systems, so networked devices that that machine can is
Speaker 1: connected to that could be the next vector of attack.
Speaker 1: Trojan malware is often the delivery system for other specific
Speaker 1: subcategories of malware, such as ransomware. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and do that one now because it is so closely connected.
Speaker 1: So this is category number three. We've had virus, we
Speaker 1: have trojan virus. Now we have ransomware. And it's been
Speaker 1: in the news a lot over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: There's been some high profile ransomware attacks over the last
Speaker 1: few years. And it's similar in many ways to viruses,
Speaker 1: and that the goal is to cut off access to
Speaker 1: important programs, files, folders, entire directories, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But the way it goes about this is slightly different
Speaker 1: from viruses. So once ransomware has been injected into a
Speaker 1: computer system, it will run an encryption program and it
Speaker 1: will encrypt data on part or all of the computer system.
Speaker 1: Often it will encrypt data on any part of the
Speaker 1: computer system it can get access to, so the computer's
Speaker 1: user will be unable to access those encrypted files because
Speaker 1: to the computer all that data will just appear to
Speaker 1: be gibberish. It won't look like useful files or programs,
Speaker 1: it will just look like random data. And the companying
Speaker 1: message will alert the user that some criminal has locked
Speaker 1: away important stuff on this computer and that only by
Speaker 1: paying a ransom, typically in some form of cryptocurrency, will
Speaker 1: the user regain access to their programs and files. This
Speaker 1: can also end up being a type of blackmail as
Speaker 1: well for personal stuff. Like let's say that you have
Speaker 1: your computer. You're not necessarily part of some big company,
Speaker 1: but you get by ransomware, and the people who have
Speaker 1: locked away your data are saying, hey, if you don't
Speaker 1: want sensitive stuff on here leaked to the public, you've
Speaker 1: gotta pay me. So that this can also come in
Speaker 1: the form of blackmail. Well, what they're saying is if
Speaker 1: you pay us, then we will give you the key
Speaker 1: that will allow you to access your programs and files. Again. Uh,
Speaker 1: so the criminal can grant access by sharing this mathematical key,
Speaker 1: and that does allow for decryption, you can reverse the
Speaker 1: encryption process and regain your files and programs and turn
Speaker 1: it back into useful stuff. So the criminal is essentially
Speaker 1: holding a user's programs and files or directories or whatever
Speaker 1: hostage until they get paid a ransom. Now I've said
Speaker 1: this many times on tech news episodes, but it bears repeating.
Speaker 1: It is pretty much always a bad idea to pay
Speaker 1: the ransom. It can be very hard to resist the
Speaker 1: urge to pay to get to regain control of your systems,
Speaker 1: but it's bad to do because paying reinforces that method
Speaker 1: of attack. If criminals see that ransomware can make them money,
Speaker 1: even if it only works one time out of five
Speaker 1: times or anything like that, well that could be enough
Speaker 1: to keep these attacks going. It's it's proven to work,
Speaker 1: so they're going to keep doing it. So paying ransoms
Speaker 1: really just ensures that more attack X will follow in
Speaker 1: the future, maybe not directly against you, but definitely against others. Also,
Speaker 1: another thing you need to keep in mind is the
Speaker 1: victim can never be really sure that the criminal is
Speaker 1: actually going to hand over the key needed to decrypt
Speaker 1: the data. They could just take the money and run
Speaker 1: and leave you with an encrypted system and then you
Speaker 1: don't really have any options. You can try and decrypt it,
Speaker 1: but like decryption programs can take a lot of computational
Speaker 1: processing and a ton of time. This is one of
Speaker 1: the things that quantum computers will completely transform in the future,
Speaker 1: but we're not there yet. Well, criminals could do that.
Speaker 1: It is risky for a criminal to just take the
Speaker 1: money and run because if folks figure out who carried
Speaker 1: out the attack, even if it's just like in general terms,
Speaker 1: like you kind of know what hacker network was likely
Speaker 1: responsible for the attack, well, that sends a message to
Speaker 1: future victims that even if they pay the ransom, they'll
Speaker 1: still get stuck. So there's no point in hang. So
Speaker 1: criminals are not likely to hold back on it, but
Speaker 1: it is a possibility still. It's always a bad idea
Speaker 1: to really pay the ransom, but it can be difficult
Speaker 1: to hold off. Criminals like to target companies and organizations
Speaker 1: that have critical sensitive data on them, which obviously ups
Speaker 1: the stakes considerably. So hospitals and other healthcare facilities are
Speaker 1: frequent targets because there are literal life and death situations
Speaker 1: connected to that data. It is not easy to deny
Speaker 1: a ransom. When you think that people's lives literally hold
Speaker 1: in the balance, that's a difficult thing to do. Um
Speaker 1: The same can be said of a lot of government
Speaker 1: agencies that have really sensitive information that they need access to.
Speaker 1: It is difficult to resist paying that ransom. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of potential ways that ransomware can find its
Speaker 1: way onto a system, from targeted attacks to more kind
Speaker 1: of broad approaches, like a phishing scam can be a
Speaker 1: very broadway to get ransomware onto machines. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what fishing is, then you are a sweet summer child,
Speaker 1: and I really hate to chip away at your innocence.
Speaker 1: But a phishing attack is when criminals create what seems
Speaker 1: to be a legitimate message, or legitimate website or email,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, but it actually directs people to
Speaker 1: either voluntarily give up information that they should not give up,
Speaker 1: such as like a bank account number and log in information,
Speaker 1: or it will direct people to a link that will
Speaker 1: have them download the malware. Okay, we've got a couple
Speaker 1: more types to talk about, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, next up, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about worms so not the squiggly little guys who
Speaker 1: live in apples and that kind of thing. We're talking
Speaker 1: computer worms. And a computer worm is malware designed to
Speaker 1: replicate itself very quickly and then to spread across numerous
Speaker 1: connected devices on a network. So it's only job really
Speaker 1: is to replicate and infect, and to do that as
Speaker 1: as widely and quickly as possible. So if one machine
Speaker 1: on a network gets hit, others on that same network
Speaker 1: are in immediate danger. But how does the initial attack happen?
Speaker 1: How does the worm get on you know, patient zero
Speaker 1: in the computer network. Well, unlike a virus, a worm
Speaker 1: doesn't rely on a host file in order to execute
Speaker 1: its attack, So this isn't a case where a file
Speaker 1: like a PDF or something happens to be carrying a
Speaker 1: worm as well. The worm can infect through a direct download,
Speaker 1: or it can be injected through some other means, such
Speaker 1: as on a USB drive. By the way, just in
Speaker 1: case you haven't heard this for a while, never connect
Speaker 1: some found USB drive to your computer. You never know
Speaker 1: if the drive on that USB drive has some executable
Speaker 1: code on it that's just waiting to infect a network. Anyway,
Speaker 1: once the worm is on an infected system, it copies
Speaker 1: itself and sends those copies to other machines on the network,
Speaker 1: all with the goal of disrupting operations and or destroying
Speaker 1: data in the process. So those are also bad news.
Speaker 1: The next two types of malware are very similar, so
Speaker 1: we're just gonna put them together. We're talking spyware and
Speaker 1: add ware. So spyware, as the name suggests, is this
Speaker 1: malicious software that runs in the background on a machine,
Speaker 1: real secret like, and then it sends information back to
Speaker 1: a remote user. You heard me talk about this kind
Speaker 1: of with the trojan viruses. Spyware can be delivered via
Speaker 1: trojan and the whole purpose is to send sensitive information
Speaker 1: back to the criminal. So spyware can also include specific
Speaker 1: stuff like key loggers. These are programs that, as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, record or log every single key stroke made
Speaker 1: on a computer, so the criminal back home can use
Speaker 1: that information to figure out stuff like log in credentials,
Speaker 1: you know, banking information, all sorts of stuff. Well made
Speaker 1: spyware will not alert the target that something is wrong.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily impact computer performance that much, at least
Speaker 1: not to a noticeable degree. So the goal is to
Speaker 1: stay under the radar for as long as possible to
Speaker 1: get as much information as possible. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is why I say that James Bond is a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible spy. I mean the guy goes around and introduces
Speaker 1: himself everywhere he goes. He violates like rule number one
Speaker 1: of spy ishness, so that spyware. But then what is
Speaker 1: adwere well, similar to spyware, adware monitors your computer use,
Speaker 1: but instead of using the information to steal your personal
Speaker 1: details or gain access to your accounts, adware is spying
Speaker 1: on you in order to serve up more applicable ads
Speaker 1: to you. This can include stuff like even hijacking your
Speaker 1: web browser so that when you open up your web browser,
Speaker 1: your homepage is no longer whatever it was before, but
Speaker 1: now it goes to some other site that's connected to
Speaker 1: the adware creators or their distributors. This can also lead
Speaker 1: down pathways to other types of malware, so adware, while
Speaker 1: it is not necessarily malicious on its own, can lead
Speaker 1: you to downloading stuff that is malicious. Um and as
Speaker 1: much nastier machines can also get bogged down with adware.
Speaker 1: So even if it's not outright malicious, if a lot
Speaker 1: of different adware gets on your computer, it can start
Speaker 1: to affect your computer's performance over time. So because it
Speaker 1: has been used for malicious purposes, because it's often part
Speaker 1: of the the entire strategy of attack that that criminals
Speaker 1: are using, it gets lumped in as a version of malware,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not necessarily malicious, but it's used frequently
Speaker 1: enough to be included on lists of malware. And finally,
Speaker 1: the last version we have is called fileless malware. Now,
Speaker 1: as that name alright says, this malware is not attached
Speaker 1: to some sort of file that you download off the internet. Instead,
Speaker 1: this malicious code lives in computer memory, so as long
Speaker 1: as the computer is on, the code can do whatever
Speaker 1: it was designed to do. You know, malware does different
Speaker 1: things depending upon the attackers goals, but it just lives
Speaker 1: in your computer memory, which means that if you reboot
Speaker 1: your computer, while rebooting clears computer memory. Right. Memory is volatile,
Speaker 1: meaning that when you turn off your machine and then
Speaker 1: turning back on, well, the memory has been wiped. It
Speaker 1: was it was white clean as soon as you turned
Speaker 1: it off, and when you turn it back on, you've
Speaker 1: got a blank slate. That's good in the sense that
Speaker 1: you could then eliminate the malware that was living in
Speaker 1: your computer memory, but it also erases all trace of
Speaker 1: the fileless malware, so it makes investigating and computer forensics
Speaker 1: really challenging. There are ways, by the way, that cybercriminals
Speaker 1: create to create persistent fileless malware, where then involves infecting
Speaker 1: some element of your computers operating system so that every
Speaker 1: time it boots up, it injects this malware back into
Speaker 1: computer memory. So there are those versions as well. Those
Speaker 1: obviously are easier to investigate because if you find that
Speaker 1: that root code in the operating system, you know what's happening.
Speaker 1: But how do you inject malicious code into computer memory
Speaker 1: to start with? There are actually a lot of potential
Speaker 1: delivery systems, including piggybacking onto other types of malware, so
Speaker 1: that that's one possibility, But another one is to leverage
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities in known legitimate pieces of software. These kind of
Speaker 1: exploits allow criminals to lean on trusted code to deliver
Speaker 1: malicious payloads, and we've seen an increase in that kind
Speaker 1: of activity over the last couple of years. It's really insidious,
Speaker 1: right because you trust the software. It's software from a
Speaker 1: legitimate source. It is not designed to be malware. It's
Speaker 1: maybe it's productivity software, maybe it's you know something, It
Speaker 1: could even be something that your your organization has installed
Speaker 1: onto your work computer. Right, you might not have had
Speaker 1: any hand in that. But if there's a vulnerability in
Speaker 1: there that has not yet been patched out, and a
Speaker 1: criminal figures out how to exploit that to deliver payloads,
Speaker 1: that can be the vector where you get things like
Speaker 1: fouleless malware injected into machines. There's really nothing you can
Speaker 1: do about it because the the solution is further up
Speaker 1: the chain. It's over with the the designers of that
Speaker 1: that software that's been exploited, and you need to get
Speaker 1: an update patched out to fix that problem, and that's
Speaker 1: not up to you most cases. So that's really the
Speaker 1: breakdown of the different types of malware. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the delivery systems for these attacks are varied. You can
Speaker 1: get these types of malware in various ways. There's no
Speaker 1: single vector that's used by each and they can also
Speaker 1: be used in combination with one another. So how do
Speaker 1: you protect yourself against all these kinds of malware? Well,
Speaker 1: one thing to do is to practice good computer security etiquette,
Speaker 1: which includes careful web browsing. That means, you know, you
Speaker 1: make certain that the sites that you're visiting are legitimate
Speaker 1: and you're not just clicking on random links that have
Speaker 1: been sent to you from like strange email addresses or
Speaker 1: messaging services or something like that, or even text messages.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of uh spam text messages now
Speaker 1: that are clearly attempting to get me to visit some
Speaker 1: link and are a phishing scam. Uh. Same with email.
Speaker 1: Gmail in particular, A lot of phishing attacks have been
Speaker 1: coming to my Gmail address, and Gmail usually was pretty
Speaker 1: good at weeding those things out, but every now and
Speaker 1: then I get a new kind of slate of of
Speaker 1: clearly clearly they're phishing attacks. They're not well made because
Speaker 1: if you even just look at the scent field, like
Speaker 1: who these emails are going to, you'll see like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're literally just doing a dictionary attack of email addresses,
Speaker 1: and mine just happens to be in that list. So
Speaker 1: this is not some sort of personalized message, but it
Speaker 1: is a way of trying to cast a very wide
Speaker 1: net and at least get a few bites where I
Speaker 1: guess that's mixing metaphors. But if you catches in that
Speaker 1: in that effort um. But that's not the only thing
Speaker 1: you need to think about when it comes to good
Speaker 1: computer security etiquette. Another is being super careful about who
Speaker 1: you allow to access your physical computer, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the quote unquote hacking attacks that we hear about
Speaker 1: are not actually the result of some hoodie wearing hacker
Speaker 1: wearing fingerless gloves and tapping away on a keyboard in
Speaker 1: a dark room somewhere, their face only lit by the
Speaker 1: screen across from them. Instead, a lot of the hacking
Speaker 1: attacks are carried out by people who just get physical
Speaker 1: access to machines. Typically they do this by posing as
Speaker 1: someone like an I T professional who comes around and says, Oh,
Speaker 1: I need to update your computer with this new security
Speaker 1: package or new software update, something like that. That's a
Speaker 1: very common way to get access to a machine. So
Speaker 1: it's always vitally important to verify that someone who's claiming
Speaker 1: to be updating your machine is actually who they say
Speaker 1: they are, that they are authorized to do this before
Speaker 1: you allow it to happen, because countless attacks start through
Speaker 1: this very kind of social engineering, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: trying three times to guess the password and getting it
Speaker 1: right on the third time. Anti virus software is also
Speaker 1: an important piece um. This kind of software can affect
Speaker 1: computer performance during scans in particular, and I know that
Speaker 1: gets frustrating, but it's still a good idea to have it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: anti virus software typically refers to a library of known
Speaker 1: malicious code. So there's this growing database of all the
Speaker 1: kinds of malware that have been found out in the
Speaker 1: wild and identified by various security experts. So that library
Speaker 1: is updated frequently. No matter which anti virus software you're
Speaker 1: you're subscribed to or using, they are relying on a
Speaker 1: library like this. Some of them are updated more frequently
Speaker 1: than others. Some of them are better and have more
Speaker 1: examples than others because new code is constant a being
Speaker 1: churned out as far as malware is concerned. So your
Speaker 1: antivirus programs scans your computer for evidence of these examples
Speaker 1: of known malicious code, and if it finds one, it
Speaker 1: will sequester and isolate that code to mitigate any harm,
Speaker 1: and often will automatically remove the code as well. Some
Speaker 1: programs might actually require you to give the command to
Speaker 1: remove the malware, but it will isolate it so that
Speaker 1: it can't do any more harm. And I know that
Speaker 1: a lot of antivirus programs can get expensive. Goodness knows
Speaker 1: that they can really be obnoxious. Once your subscription is
Speaker 1: starting to get close to the end, you'll just get
Speaker 1: notification after notification of hey, your protection is expiring, do
Speaker 1: you want to renew? But they really are a good
Speaker 1: component for computer security. UH. They're also free antivirus programs
Speaker 1: out there, and you know they vary in quality, but
Speaker 1: really some protection is better than no protection at all.
Speaker 1: So if you can't afford to subscribe to a like
Speaker 1: big name UH provider like Caspersky or Norton or something
Speaker 1: like that, then you can at least look for a
Speaker 1: good free anti virus suite out there. Also, would the
Speaker 1: operating system that you use on your device will be
Speaker 1: a big factor as to whether or not you should
Speaker 1: really have anti virus on there. I I honestly think
Speaker 1: that for pretty much any device outside of iOS, you
Speaker 1: need anti virus. iOS you really don't, but everything else
Speaker 1: you you kind of do. However, that being said, if
Speaker 1: you use a Windows based machine, you absolutely should have
Speaker 1: antivirus software on there. And the reason is not because
Speaker 1: Windows is just inherently more vulnerable than other platforms. Although
Speaker 1: you know mac OS is locked down pretty tightly. It's
Speaker 1: because there are more Windows based machines out there than
Speaker 1: anything else, which in turn means that when criminals are
Speaker 1: designing malicious software, they want to have the biggest impact
Speaker 1: they can possibly have, So they're going to be programming
Speaker 1: their malicious software for the platforms that are the most
Speaker 1: plentiful out there. When it comes to things like personal
Speaker 1: computers and work computers, that tends to be Windows based machines.
Speaker 1: So when you know that most of the malicious software
Speaker 1: out there is being written for Windows devices and you
Speaker 1: use a Windows device, then in turn tells you you
Speaker 1: should probably have antivirus software installed on your machine just
Speaker 1: because you're more likely to be a target. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know there are other platforms out there and they
Speaker 1: are not immune. Mac operating system, while it has a
Speaker 1: great reputation because Apple really locks down its system and
Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to gain access to it, there
Speaker 1: are still examples of malware written specifically for Mac OS,
Speaker 1: and they have been on the rise in recent years. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were years where Apple was enjoying security through obscurity
Speaker 1: to some extent, meaning the US there were so relatively
Speaker 1: few Apple devices on the market malware authors weren't really
Speaker 1: targeting those machines. But then but that that's no longer
Speaker 1: really the case. And as I said, while Apple takes
Speaker 1: a very lockdown approach compared to the much more open
Speaker 1: approach to seeing things like Linux and Windows based machines,
Speaker 1: it is not immune to malware. There are people who
Speaker 1: still think that max are immune to malware. They are wrong,
Speaker 1: so keep that in mind too. Anyway, that's the rundown
Speaker 1: on the types of malware, and my my cry for
Speaker 1: UH people to install antivirus software on their machines and
Speaker 1: practice good computer security. There are other things you can do.
Speaker 1: Having a firewall installed on your network is really important.
Speaker 1: UM Using VPNs is a good idea too in many cases,
Speaker 1: like the combination of VPNs and anti virus are good
Speaker 1: ways to stay protected. Depending upon the nature of what
Speaker 1: you do on your computer, you probably want to use
Speaker 1: a VPN and anti virus software to protect yourself. This
Speaker 1: includes companies that you know are allowing workers to work
Speaker 1: remotely and deal with sensitive information that the company does
Speaker 1: not want to leave company computers. These are important things
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. So I just wanted to do that.
Speaker 1: This was going to be a tech Stuff tidbits. But
Speaker 1: we're coming up close to forty minutes at this point,
Speaker 1: so once again I babbled too much. But if you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology personality and tech
Speaker 1: maybe it's a specific gadget and it's evolution that you
Speaker 1: would like me to talk about. Anything along those lines,
Speaker 1: anything really tech oriented or how tech impacts us in
Speaker 1: our lives, I'm happy to hear it. You can reach
Speaker 1: out to me in a couple of different ways. One
Speaker 1: way is to download the I Heart Radio app. It
Speaker 1: is free to download, it's free to use. You can
Speaker 1: navigate over to the tech Stuff part of the app
Speaker 1: just by typing tech Stuff into the search field. There's
Speaker 1: a little microphone icon there. If you click on that,
Speaker 1: you can leave me a voice message up to thirties
Speaker 1: seconds in length, and if you like, you can even
Speaker 1: indicate if I can use the voice message in a
Speaker 1: future episode of tech Stuff. I will never use any
Speaker 1: voice message unless I get your express permission. You have
Speaker 1: my word on that, because I mean, I know I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want someone to play a message just because I
Speaker 1: said something into a microphone unless I intended that message
Speaker 1: to be played, which is a good thing considering what
Speaker 1: I do for a living, or if you prefer not
Speaker 1: to speak into a microphone, which is total legit. You
Speaker 1: can still reach me on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
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Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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