Activity 1-4

Why are backdoors and Trojans considered different types of malware?

A) A Trojan means a malicious program masquerading as something else. B) A backdoor is a covert means of accessing a host or network. C) A Trojan need not necessarily operate a backdoor and a backdoor can be established by exploits other than using Trojans. D) The term remote access trojan (RAT) is used for the specific combination of Trojan and backdoor.

What are the two main types of ransomware?

A) Non-encrypting ransomware makes the computer appear locked by using a different shell program or spawning pop-up windows continually. B) Encrypting (or crypto-malware) ransomware uses public key cryptography to encrypt data files then demands payment for access to the private key. ---B1) That is the only means of reversing the encryption (unless the user has backups or the ransomware was poorly designed).

While using your computer, an app window displays on your screen and tells you that all of your files are encrypted. The app window demands that you make an anonymous payment if you ever want to recover your data. You close the app window and restart your computer, only to find that your personal files are all scrambled and unreadable. What type of malware has infected your computer?

Ransomware.

Checking your email over a period of a week, you notice something unusual: The spam messages that you've been receiving all seem to be trying to sell you something closely related to the websites you happened to visit that day. For example, on Monday you visited a subscription news site, and later that day you noticed a spam email that solicited a subscription to that very news site. On Tuesday, you browsed to an online retailer in order to buy a birthday gift for your friend. The same gift you were looking at showed up in another spam email later that night. What type of malware has infected your computer?

Spyware.

You open up your favorite word processing app. As it opens, a window pops up informing you that an important file has just been deleted. You close the word processing app and open up a spreadsheet app. The same thing happens—another file is deleted. The problem continues to spread as you open up several more apps and each time, a file is deleted. What type of malware has infected your system?

Virus.