In the beginning, the Web was accessed by educators and political bureaucrats who did not conduct typical business·commerce·on the Internet and who did not send confidential data over the newfound global network. With the introduction of the graphic interface that became the World Wide Web and the proliferation of commercial sites dedicated to new types of business transactions (e-commerce), the issue of privacy and data protection became increasingly important on the Web. Companies worried that key internal information could be stolen, individuals worried that their personal identities could be stolen, and malicious hackers indulged in programming activities that shut down entire Web sites or otherwise sabotaged activities on the Internet. Security is now a prime consideration for individuals, companies, and government entities, and a variety of strategies have evolved to address security concerns. The program code that provides access to the Internet and the Web as well as that runs our cellular phones and our personal digital assistants can also be used for malicious purposes. This research considers some of the types of malicious codes that threaten computing resources, and how some systems managers are fighting back.
Threats from malicious code can be classified into several categories that are generally tied to the motive behind the breach. Some software threats may be designed to channel funds from one account into another (personal/professional gain) or to cover up a separate illegal or unethical act. This is data tampering, which can be harmful and costly to an organization, but which can be approached from the standpoint of preventing or controlling access to data. In addition to data tampering, threats include viruses, worms, Trojan horses, bombs, trap doors, and spoofs, among others.
A virus is a code fragment that copies itself into a larger program, thus modifying th
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