dstebbins

By "bad stuff," I mean viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, and adware.

I know what half of the bad things do. I know that viruses take hostage a certain file (just like biological viruses take hostage a cell) and alter the code so that the file does unwanted things.

I know a worm is like a virus, but doesn't need to be triggered in any way.

I know that spyware got its name because it's, essentially, spying software (which spyware is short for). It records everything you do on your computer and sends it back to the programmer. This is how most spam emails come along (they learn the email addresses you frequent), and they can even learn your password for many websites.

But that's as far as my knowledge of bad stuff goes. I don't know what trojans or adware do. I can reasonably infer that adware has something to do with pop-up ads or something to that affect, but I don't know anything specific, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to describe a trojan should a little child ask me about them.

Can you help me?

hermeslyre

A trojan virus enters a computer under the guise of something useful, similar to the Trojan horse of the Trojan War. Hidden in it's code is malicious software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)

This is an article describing thus.

BTW the wikipedia is a very useful site, I use it extensively when I need to learn of new things.

Punk

We have some definitions on our website:

www.benjidela.com/anti-hackers

PS: the URL will change in a year.

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dstebbins

Yeah, and Wikipedia is also so non-credible that universities and high schools the nation over are forbidding it to be used in bibliographies in any way.

Eh?

PohTayToez

Sure, it's not usable in a paper, because the sources are often unverified, but it's a great tool for learning.

Also, a word to help you out... Bad Stuff = Malware

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patrickv

when i saw the title of the thread i thought it was about drugs and stuff..lol

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dstebbins

Again, if the sources are unverified, then how do I know what they're saying is true? Unless it's verified with a credible source, for all I know, a politician could have said it.

hermeslyre

Most articles require valid sources. Some don't have them and it will be stated if that is the case.

Just to let you know all the people on this forum are "unverified". For all you know some us are politicians.

Punk

How can you verify anyway? The people who verifies might be un-veryfied .

It's just a matter of trust.

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dstebbins

It's a matter of trust on a massive scale.

Think about it: If a scientist writes a paper explaining that he made a breakthrough in science, and he explained in explicit detail the lab experiment that he engaged in (which he performed numerous times and got the same results every time), does that make him instantly credible? No. Other scientists have to repeat the same experiment and verify that they got the same results. Once the number grows to a considerable amount, people start to believe it.

But how do we know they aren't all lieing? Simply put, we don't, except for the fact that the chances of them all being in cahoots with each other with ulterior motives is less than your chances of winning the lottery. THAT'S where the verifiability comes into play; by the trustworthiness of multiple people at once, not one person.

Can someone PLEASE tell me what's so complicated about this?