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- 00:01In our openHPI course about Cyberthreats by Malware,
- 00:04we now want to discuss how malware finds its way to your computer.
- 00:12We already mentioned malware is the central attack vector in the internet.
- 00:19It is one of the central weapons of the cybercriminals.
- 00:25The devices of users, the computer systems they could be a potential target
- 00:32for malware. So with malware,
- 00:36the end user systems can be infected, with malware all the service providers
- 00:42systems can be infected. So potentially home computers
- 00:48are more vulnerable to malware attacks over the internet because typically the protection
- 00:55is less than with professional service providers.
- 01:00So malware are especially easy to use for attacks.
- 01:08So a malware offers a wide range of functionalities
- 01:13and unlimited possibilities for attacks
- 01:18when the attacker manages to
- 01:22install such malware on the computer systems of the users,
- 01:29on the devices of the users then they have an easy
- 01:34game to do their better work.
- 01:39So what they want to use by such attacks? They want to misuse computing power
- 01:45they want to utilize computing power for their own purposes, typically
- 01:51criminal and bad purposes. They want to do data destruction -
- 01:58data theft, data manipulation.
- 02:00They want to destruct entire computer systems.
- 02:06They want to send and
- 02:10show advertisements to earn money for doing this.
- 02:15They often create fear in the user
- 02:20and then they misuse this fear for their purpose.
- 02:24We will see this in more detail. To send blackmail, to perform espionage,
- 02:32many other activities are performed by means of malware.
- 02:39Now the question is how the malware here from the hacker
- 02:43comes over the internet to the system of the users.
- 02:48So the cybercriminals first they developed the malware.
- 02:53They developed the malware to infect the victim systems. There is a large
- 02:58library of such malwares, often malware is adapted to a certain
- 03:02purpose, to a certain attack process. So the cyber criminal
- 03:07prepares such a malware and then they send it as they try to
- 03:12get it installed on the user systems. So one way, for example, is
- 03:18that the cyber criminals
- 03:20inject the malware to a medium, for example to such an application an email
- 03:28or a website or others and then in case of email, send this email
- 03:34over the internet to the
- 03:38user and when the victim
- 03:43accesses a medium, for example to open
- 03:48the email and to open the attachment of the email,
- 03:52then the malware which is hidden in that
- 03:57attachment is installing itself in the victim's computer system.
- 04:03The victim - the user doesn't become aware of that.
- 04:08So at the end his system or certain programs or applications are infected.
- 04:15The user is not aware of that. The user uses the systems, uses the applications
- 04:21and then the malware can do its bad work.
- 04:27So the attack vector of such malware attacks is in general
- 04:34that the malware need to be installed on the computer systems of the victim.
- 04:41There are different possibilities to do this.
- 04:45The human factor, social engineering methods to convince the user
- 04:51to do for some good reason
- 04:54installing the software,
- 04:56or technical factors technical failures can be misused
- 05:01so that the malware is installed at the user's system.
- 05:08And then it becomes easy for the attacker.
- 05:12So the attack here is how to get the malware
- 05:17installed on the user system. Let's discuss this attack vector human - the user.
- 05:24So often a victim's lack of attention is enough to get a malware installed
- 05:32on his or her computer system.
- 05:36So the malware could also be injected into the computer system
- 05:40by social engineering. For example
- 05:44promising the user to install some important
- 05:48program the user wants to have and misusing this also to install then
- 05:56malware beside of the software.
- 05:59So examples, I already mentioned this, open an email
- 06:05an email with a malicious attachment or downloading something from the internet,
- 06:11for example a new application or
- 06:17special information or a game
- 06:22or something like that and then after opening that
- 06:28system which was infected by malware, then malware is installed
- 06:34on the side of the user. So if we look at some statistics, then
- 06:39it's about half and half that people open an
- 06:44unknown attachment or application.
- 06:49About a half doesn't do this.
- 06:52So here we see almost a half which opens such unknown attachments for curiosity
- 07:00or carelessness or negligence or others.
- 07:04So this is then the attacker have one.
- 07:09This way as soon as a
- 07:11user opens his attachment the malware
- 07:16will be installed on his system.
- 07:21Also the promise here in internet you can install some helpful software
- 07:26to clean your system or even to find out whether
- 07:31there is malware on your system. Often such systems
- 07:36that are available in the internet are
- 07:39infected with malware. Malware is hidden in that
- 07:46programs and the user that wants to have this functionality
- 07:51on his system is installing is downloading that system and then
- 07:55he or she also downloads the malware hidden in that system.
- 08:02Another way to your computer is to misuse USB sticks.
- 08:07So connecting a foreign USB stick which was in fact, in which
- 08:13a malware was installed, and in the moment the
- 08:19USB stick is connected and the data
- 08:25explorer is used to see what is
- 08:31stored on this USB stick, then in that system the malware already infects
- 08:37the computer. And then public WiFi networks are a way to
- 08:44bring systems
- 08:48malware to your computer. We will discuss
- 08:53certain points when we speak about different types of malware
- 08:57even in more detail. Here in the general,
- 09:01after the attack vector human, I want to also mention the attack vector
- 09:06technical. Technical is that, malware could, in fact the computer system
- 09:11without any user interaction.
- 09:16So this is more difficult for the cybercriminals. They exploit
- 09:23available vulnerabilities in the system of the victim in the system
- 09:28they want to target and then if they see that there are inadequate
- 09:34security protection measures or that there are some failures in the
- 09:39configuration, then they find a way to
- 09:45bring, to install their malware.
- 09:48In the same network, if sometimes a computer gets infected in the network
- 09:54then it's also highly probably that also other computers in that network
- 10:01get infected without any kind of interaction.
- 10:06So it's really dangerous - this malware and the attack vector is
- 10:14for the cybercriminals how to get the malware
- 10:18installed at the user's system.
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