Internet Threats

Currently, there are tens of thousands of known existing Internet threats, and dozens—sometimes hundreds—of new threats released on the Internet everyday.

At one time, viruses were the most common problem. However, today's Internet threats have become more sophisticated, designed to spread with extreme rapidity and exploit certain faults or weaknesses in an operating system, browser, or network security system. Here are a couple of examples of threats:

• Trojan horses

• Worms (and droppers, the bits of harmful code often left behind in a worm attack)

• Spyware/grayware

• Network viruses

• DoS (Denial of Service attacks)

• Mixed threat attacks

• Malicious Java code and Applets

• VBScript, JavaScript

• Joke programs

• Executable and Link format

• Virus/malware, for example show more >>>

  • HTML viruses

  • Macro viruses

  • ActiveX malicious code

  • COM and EXE file infectors

  • Boot sector viruses

   

• Web mail attachments

• Web traffic and sites (disease vectors)

• FTP traffic from the Internet (file downloads)

In addition, there are a lot more network vulnerabilities:

• Instant messaging file transfers

• (infected) Laptops that log on to your network

• Key-logging spyware that opens an outbound port

• Custom hacked legitimate programs, or manipulated counterfeits

See Also:

• Threat Types

• Virus writers