In short, it’s pretty dangerous – your whole online profile is at risk with some strains – so read our malware primer and don’t get caught out.
Malware is a contraction of ‘malicious software’, and is an all-encompassing term for any program designed specifically to attack, damage or compromise a system in some way.
Malware only exists to attempt to exploit your device or personal data in some manner, usually for the author’s own gain – say, for example, stealing your online banking details – but sometimes it effectively represents random acts of virtual violence, such as a virus which just nukes your entire system.
So yes, it can be dangerous – we’ll discuss that further in a moment – and to defend against some of the disastrous potential scenarios malware can bring about, it’s a good idea to use antivirus to protect your PC.
Malware is such a broad term, it’s employed very generally to cover anything bad happening to your PC in terms of rogue software that exploits your system in some way.
However, there are different subsets of commonly recognized malware, and we’ll now look briefly at the main offenders (there are other variations out there, too).
The virus (which we’ve already mentioned) is one of the most common types of malware. A virus comes embedded in a piece of software or file, and infects the system when that app or file is run. When that happens, what’s called the payload is triggered – in other words, the bad things that happen to your PC (which you may not even notice, as some effects are designed to be stealthy). Then the virus – as its name suggests – can spread itself to other files, and therefore potentially to other PCs (if those files are transferred).
A worm acts in much the same way to spread itself, but is even more dangerous, because it doesn’t need to be ‘triggered’ by the user (via a file being run) – it automatically propagates itself.
