Tag Archives: application
Types of Computer Viruses
In computing terminology, a malicious code is a term used for computer viruses and programs designed to cause damage to computers. Other types of destructive PC worms are known as Internet virus including the examples like Worms and Trojans.
Outlined below is the description of different kinds of computer viruses:
Program/File Infector
Falling under the category of parasitic viruses, a program or file infector attempts to infect the files with extension code like .exe, .com, .drv, .dil, .bin, .ovl, and .sys. It gets activate along with the execution of executable file containing virus. The virus then loads itself into memory and replicates itself to other executable files when these files are opened or run.
The File Infector virus can destroy the content contained in files and cause irreversible damage to them. Some file viruses have also operated as email worm and Trojan horse.
The best way to disinfect files infected by the file virus is to delete them and restore from back up.
Macro Computer Virus
A macro computer virus is a virus written in a language built into a software application such as a word processor. For example: Microsoft Office has the macro language built into its application. This is why most of its application programs are affected by macro computer virus.
Macro viruses are generally created using the macro recorder or Visual Basic for Applications. The applications that are the most prone to this antivirus are Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Power Point Presentation, and Access Database. The virus infects templates of these documents and therefore every file that the user opens gets affected. Some common macro computer viruses are Auto Exec, Auto New, Auto Open, Auto Close, and Auto Exit.
The auto macros can be disabled by using the command DisableAutoMacros in any macro that is written. Another way to remove it is by holding down the shift key while opening a document.
Multi-Partite Virus
It behaves in the same way as other computer viruses do. As the name signifies, they are sometimes more than one type. These are hybrids and are known as multi-partite virus.
Polymorphic Viruses
It is a kind of virus which produces different but operational copies for itself. Its attack is considered to be extremely dangerous as virus detectors will not be able to detect all instances of virus attacks simultaneously. And this is one of the reasons why it is known to be strategically designed.
Stealth Viruses
A stealth virus uses different mechanisms to prevent recognition by antivirus software. It tries to escape detection either by redirecting the disk head to head to read another sector or modifying the file size shown in the Directory listing.
Classification of some viruses is not possible as they are the file type viruses which start behaving as computer worms with an activation code.
Oracle solutions and Oracle application development extend support to Open Source technologies
Oracle is a company that always focuses on the customers and is always dedicated in providing the users with flexibility, choice and also reduced cost of computing. Oracle invests a lot for the Oracle Application development which in turn tests, develops, supports and optimizes open source technology like Open Office.Org, Linux, MySQL, Glassfish, Eclipse, Apache, Netbeans, PHP, Berkeley DB, Xen, innoDB and Virtual box. It is evident that Oracle offers the primary open source solutions as a practical and feasible option for the use and development. Oracle solutions are the best in the market.
The importance of the open standards cannot be stressed either in the perspective of non open or open source software. These days there are a lot of users who use Oracle Solutions along with Open source technology in an environment where the mission is vital. The benefits that they enjoy because of this are reduced cost, more simple and easy to manage, more reliable and higher availability. This of course is along with better scalability and performance.
Here is a glimpse of the various open source technologies being offered from Oracle application development
- Eclipse Oracle is one of the board members of the Eclipse foundation. They contribute a lot and also they played a main role in three projects of the Eclipse namely Java Server faces, BPEL and Dali JPA Tools.
- Glassfish this is a very flexible and light weight open source application server. Glassfish is one of the firsts applications that allow compatible deployment of the Java EE 6 platform.
- Java – java is one of the, most commonly used programming languages. It is a platform that has state of art which includes games, utilities and also applications for the business. More than 97% of the systems run on Java. Java is also used on mobile phones these days.
- Linux the oracle solutions has provided a lot of contribution to advance the development of Linux. They also provide an enterprise class support to the Linux at a much lower cost.
- MySQL one of the most commonly used and well-known open source databases which is meant for the web and Oracle application development gains immense benefit from it.
- Net Beans net beans provides the developers an open source IDE that is integrated development environment for free. It also provides all the tools that are necessary to make a professional web, enterprise, desktop and also mobile applications with the help of PHP, C++, java Script, Java, Ruby and Groovy. The modular swing application is only available in the net beans platform and in any other platform.
- PHP for enterprises that has the Zend server oracle is very dedicated to enable the open source scripting language called the PHP.
- Open JDK the open JDK is an open source implementation that belongs to the Java platform. It is there in the standard edition of the java. It is free software. The license for this is a general public license of the GNU and Oracle solutions has invested to get the best out of this application
- Virtual box- this is also available under the GNU general public license and it provides a very potential AMD64/Intel64 and x86 based desktop virtualization.
- Java Micro edition this is mainly used for developing mobile applications and also for embedded devices.
How could Web application (in)security affect me?
Nearly 55 percent of all vulnerability disclosures in 2008 affected web applications.
Web applications have become the major hunting grounds for cyber criminals who quite rightly view them as low hanging fruit. Just as building new motorways improves access for traditional burglars and car thieves, web applications internet accessibility literally delivers them to the hackers doors.
For some time now, cyber crime has simply been another arm of organised crime. And organised crime is pouring a substantial portion of its vast resources into cyber crime … because the return on investment is very high.
Organised crime goes to great lengths to get its hands on any information and the more confidential it is, the better. Once theyve hacked into an application, they can either make use of it themselves or sell it on to others. They can also take control of the various resources such as servers and databases that house that information and turn a profit from that as well.
Having gained control of your computing power by exploiting vulnerabilities and adding code to your application, they add your power to their existing haul and create botnets a global network of robots reporting to their master command-and-control node which can be directed to attack other organisations, or sold to other criminals who, once they hold enough power, can orchestrate denial of service attacks.
No longer is it enough for these criminals to boast of their hacking prowess; these days its all about the money. Given that a properly engineered denial of service attack is powerful enough to bring down pretty much any global multi-national corporation or, in fact, any small country and take them off-line for the duration, this is not about bragging rights, its extortion. It is money-motivated from start to finish.
Because all information and all computing power is grist to the mill for the criminals, no company is too small and certainly no company is too big to be targeted. And as the security in large enterprises is often no better than small entities, size is truly no barrier to the criminals.
And no business can afford the consequences of a security breach. At the very least, mismanaging confidential information almost always leads to reputational damage. Reputational damage leads to departure of existing clients as well as difficulty attracting new business a situation that can go on for many years. There are obvious bottom line implications to those consequences; in the most extreme cases, businesses can go under.
According to IBMs X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report, the predominant risks to web applications are from cross-site scripting, SQL injection and file include vulnerabilities.
Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities occur when web applications do not properly validate user input, thus allowing criminals to embed their own script into a page the user is visiting. This script can steal confidential information or exploit existing vulnerabilities in the users web browser. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities are typically exploited in phishing attacks by sending users a malicious link to a page in a legitimate domain name via email. The criminals get high returns because users trust the familiar domain name they are visiting and thus trust the links (created by the criminals) therein.
SQL injection vulnerabilities are also about improperly validated user input, but in this case that input includes SQL statements that are executed by a database, giving attackers access to that database to read, delete and modify sensitive information (like credit card data) as well as embedding code into the database allowing attacks against other visitors to the web site.
File-include vulnerabilities occur when the application is forced to execute code from a non-validated remote source, allowing criminals to take over the web application remotely. This category includes some denial-of-service attacks as well as techniques that allow criminals direct access to files, directories, user information and other components of the web application.
Facilitating all these kinds of attacks is the fact that many web sites contain some code to support various features and functions which inadvertently introduces vulnerabilities.
Russian roulette, anyone?