Malware and Malicious Software
Stub. The taxonomy of malicious software (viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, ransomware), how each propagates and persists, and the basic detection approaches (signature-based, behavioral/heuristic) each is designed to evade.
Once code execution is hijacked (or a user is tricked into running something directly), what runs next has its own taxonomy: self-replicating malware (viruses that need a host program, worms that spread autonomously over a network) versus malware that relies on deception (trojans) or on hiding its own presence after the fact (rootkits, which subvert the OS’s own reporting of what’s running). Covers how each class propagates and persists, and the two basic families of detection it has to evade — signature matching against known samples, and behavioral/heuristic analysis of what a program actually does at runtime.
Outline (TODO — flesh out each)
- Viruses and worms — propagation
- Trojans
- Rootkits — hiding presence and persistence
- Ransomware
- Detection: signature-based vs. behavioral/heuristic