Comment Re: Problems with the staff (Score 1) 181
You have a weird definition of "virus" and "malware".
In my world, Malware includes everything that gets installed on your machine (surreptitiously or not) that does "bad" things ("mal" = (french) bad, evil). That would include worms, viruses, rootkits, unwanted toolbars, home page redirectors, Stuxnet, Cryptolocker, and just about every other form of third-party computer abuse.
Virus is a subset of malware.
I've been accessing the Usenet a long time. viruses; when spyware started appearing and worms popular, people were having a problem differentiating between them when posting. long story short Malware became an accepted and all encompassing term.
So yes it's Malware.
In my world, the last virus I can remember is when the U.S. with support from a controller manufacture, sent out a virus that looked for a specific configuration. It was passed on by autorun/autoplay, when it found it's target began damaging Iran's Uranium centrifuges to where they were continually replacing them out http://i62.tinypic.com/2podt7d... - centrifuges
I haven't run an anti-virus program in ages. My firewall alerts me to potential malware, protects important OS areas, or sandbox's any program it's (I'm) not familiar with; and it doesn't scream when it finds a debugger or similar. Almost anything other than a rootkit or buffer overflow can be found with "autoruns"; at least that's how I play the game.
It's detrimental to the malware of today to format hard drives, due to it's intended "mission" most likely to gather data, open a backdoor or allow itself access to IRC for instructions (how Sony was taken down). www.GRC.com has an excellent article on IRC malware posted many years ago, the word malware won't be used (before it's usage).
When I POP'd my E-mail and saw the same subject in most of them I thought uh-oh.
I can't word it any better than to your reply.
FWIW I'm downloading files from Usenet now, I'm always downloading files; it's reliable. I quit posting long ago when the group I frequented went from a help and support (almost always computer related) to a political discussion area. With the name of 24hoursupport.helpdesk it's surprising anybody finds it for what it's become.
