NET-180 Week 2: Chapter 6 and 7

This week I learned more about malware.  I was already familiar with the general concept, of computer programs that are used for malicious purposes, hence the name.   I was not surprised to see it confirmed that C and C++ are common programming languages for malware, as performance and portability are important for malware, as is relative ease of creation, all of which are qualities of C and C++, as I know from my time studying at NIU.  An example of a somewhat famous piece of malware that was not a virus but widely considered a trojan piece of spyware/adware is BonziBuddy. BonziBuddy was a virtual assistant program that ran on Windows, however, it would surreptitiously send some information to servers belonging to the company owned by its creators, and also change your homepage.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy)

The circumstances under which I would consider software to be malware depend upon intent.  For example, a Remote Administration Toolkit can be used for legitimate purposes, but can also be used to steal information from a computer or install other malware, such as ransomware.

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