The malicious software attack, usually known as malware attack is a potential threat resulting in devastating damage to your computers and other internet-enabled devices and causing disaster in your business and organisations. The malware attacks are disastrous because the users normally do not get to know about the attack and by the time the users finally become conscious about the attack, the system is already infected or hacked. The cybercriminals develop malicious software and send them to the target computers and other internet-enabled devices without the knowledge of the users, is to gain access to the target systems particularly the data and information of the users and cause damage to the system and network. Though, most computers get malware through less complicated ways such as clicking on the infected downloads, opening suspected attachments, responding to strangers’ email communications etc. it is always good to know about the more intensive and complicated malware attacks that are performed by the contemporary cybercriminals.
The usual purposes of malware attacks are financial gain through gaining sensitive and financial information especially online banking usernames and passwords, credit card details etc. The attackers can cause malware infection in almost all types of operating systems and software such as Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS, macOS etc. Malware attacks are growing in many new and sophisticated ways every year particularly the mobile ransomware attacks which has increased three times more than the previous years in 2018, especially in the US.
The Exploit kits are one of the commonly used malicious toolkits used by the attackers in order to seek vulnerabilities in the computers, mobile phones and other internet-enabled devices. The kits come with prewritten code and once they find the vulnerabilities they inject malware into the system.
Similarly, another sophisticated way the attackers use to inject malware is through drive-by-download. The drive-by-download is a type of the download which automatically performs downloading of the malicious software when a user visits a malicious website. The user may have no intention of downloading anything while visiting the malicious website, the drive-by-download ultimately seeks for vulnerabilities in the browser and eventually injects malware into the system. Another most common and sophisticated way of the cybercriminals to transfer malware is the “Malvertising” which is very popular among the attackers in the contemporary period.
In fact, Malvertising is the combination of “malicious and advertising” where the attackers buy legitimate space for advertising in legitimate websites, but they embed malicious codes in the ad. Exactly like the drive-by-download, the Malvertising does not require any interaction with the user for downloading anything, rather it automatically gets downloaded by clicking on the ad.
