A new report claims that malware attacks are once again on the rise in 2024. This type of attack seems like it used to be all we talked about, but in recent years, it was dwarfed in popularity and frequency by phishing scams.
Since the threat level of malware is rising, it's time to talk about it again. Here's what you need to know about malware attacks: what they are, why they matter, and what's different this time around.
What Is Malware?
Malware is a portmanteau of “malicious” and “software,” which pretty much explains the game: malware is software that runs on your computer just like any other software you would use, only this particular subset of software is malicious, dangerous, and usually installed without your consent or awareness.
What Can Malware Do?
All sorts of nasty things.
Malware has the ability to do a wide range of things to your computer. It can act as a keylogger, which means recording every keystroke you make and sending that data back to the bad guys in secret. Think about everything you type: usernames, passwords, Google searches, sensitive company, data, and even personal communications with your loved ones. It's more than a little uncomfortable to think that someone might have access to all of that information.
There are also other forms of information stealing malware out there that search through computers or networks for certain types of files.
Business email compromise (BEC) is another malware threat, where the malware warms its way into your email system where it can potentially send emails as if you were the one sending them.
Malware can also be used to propagate a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack, where numerous infected devices Send bogus requests to a website or server, flooding it with fake traffic and causing it to go down.
All together, there are a lot of possibilities here, none of them good.
Why Malware Is Resurfacing in 2024
If you've been around the Internet or the business world long, you probably remember hearing about malware in the past. It seems like we haven't heard much about it recently, though, which might seem strange. But there are good reasons for this.
Essentially this is a giant game of cat and mouse, the bad guys from a decade or two ago sent malware that was obvious and easy to spot: attached .EXE files in emails, for example.
Eventually, the good guys (that's the companies that provide your Internet services, like Microsoft and Google, and so on) got wires to those attacks and started blocking them at the source. So, even though it's still good advice to never open an attachment that ends in .EXE, you're probably never going to see one. That particular attack was too obvious and too dangerous, so service providers started blocking all such attachments, and legitimate users stopped sending them.
This kind of stuff is going on behind the scenes all the time: the bad guys figure out a new type of attack, and then eventually the good guys figure out a way to block that attack. Right now, we're in the middle of another one of those cycles.
Plus, it's also possible to set up an email phishing scheme that tricks users into willingly installing the malware. That's a lot harder to actively block than sketchy email attachments!
What You Can Do
Keeping your business safe means following good Internet practices and training your people to recognize dangerous and scammy content before they click. You also want to make sure all your devices are equipped with modern business, defense, software, and that all your software and hardware is kept up-to-date as consistently as you possibly can. There are also ways to improve the security of your network, but for these, you will want a skilled partner to assist.
If you're concerned about keeping your business safe, or even if you're just overwhelmed trying to manage all your IT yourself, our team can help. Give us a call!