What Is Malware?
And
How Does It Work?

Understanding What Malware Is

Malware is a short-term for malicious software. The term "malware" refers to harmful software developed by cybercriminals (often called hackers) that disrupts or manipulates an electronic device's normal operation. The overwhelming majority of malware is created to illegally make money, often by stealing sensitive information and confidential information like passwords from victims' computers and mobile devices and selling the user organisation’s intellectual property, such as financial details on the dark web. Malware can also be used for cyber vandalism, cyber espionage, hacktivism, cyber warfare, and various other reasons.

Malware can gain entry to your computer via questionable file downloads, visiting infected websites, or emails containing a seemingly benign link or attachment. Examples of common malware include viruses, worms, Trojan viruses, spyware, adware, and ransomware.

Normally, people who are not in the cybersecurity field will call malware a 'virus', but actually, a virus is just a type of malware. The word "virus" is familiar to all computer users, but not the word 'malware, because the first form of malware developed was the computer virus.

From Top Malware Attack Statistics, Globally, 30,000 websites are hacked daily, and 560,000 new pieces of malware are created daily. There are now over 1 billion malware programmes in existence. Every minute, four companies fall victim to ransomware attacks. Nearly every second in China, a computer is infected with some form of malware.

According to Google's reports, 50 websites containing malware are detected every week. Although this number may seem low, the actual sites that contain malware represent just 1.6% of this number. Over the past decade, there has been an 87% increase in malware infections. The cost of cybercrime is predicted to reach $8 trillion in 2023.

In conclusion, we must be very cautious and careful when browsing the Internet because we might be downloading dangerous malware, and the worst part is that we might not even notice it until we see the signs of malware on our devices. Controlling the spread of malware is not entirely controllable; the only thing we can do is to avoid and prevent malware attacks. Learning to protect our computers from malware attacks is important and should be promoted to every computer user. Many security software products are designed to detect, prevent, and remove malware from infected systems. Users can purchase a licence from those companies that sell antivirus software and install the antivirus software to protect their computers from malware attacks.