What Is a Computer Worm and How It Works? | download.zone
A computer worm is a type of malware that copies itself and spreads from one computer to another. A worm can copy itself without any help from a person, and it doesn't have to attach itself to a program to do damage.
What Is a Computer Worm?
The term “computer worm” was first used in 1975 by John Brunner in his book “The Shockwave Rider.” In this book, the main character makes a worm that can collect information. In the early days of computer science, worms were made to take advantage of the weak spots in a system. Instead of doing serious damage to the computers they infected, they just kept spreading in the background. Worms used to do one thing, but now they do something else. Today, attackers often use them to get full control over the computers of their victims.
Malware, such as computer worms, can get into computers that are connected to a network. A computer worm is a piece of malicious software that copies itself and spreads across networks. Most of the time, the computer worm doesn’t hurt computer files. Instead, it hurts another computer on the network. The worm does this by making copies of itself. This ability is passed on to the worm’s copy, so it can infect other systems in the same way. You can also find out what the difference is between worms and viruses. Worms are independent programs that copy themselves and run in the background. Viruses, on the other hand, need a host file to infect.
How do worms infect computers?
Worms often spread by taking advantage of flaws in networking protocols like File Transfer Protocol.
After a computer worm loads and starts running on a newly infected system, it will usually follow its main goal, which is to stay active on an infected system for as long as possible and spread to as many other vulnerable systems as possible.
For example, the WannaCry ransomware worm took advantage of a weakness in the first version of the Windows Server Message Block (SMBv1) resource sharing protocol.
Once WannaCry is running on a newly infected computer, it searches the network for systems that respond to SMBv1 requests made by the worm. These systems could be new victims. The worm then keeps spreading through these clients in a network.
Malicious code attackers can make a worm look like a safe resource, like a work file or link that a user clicks on or downloads, only to find out later that it was a worm all along. Worms can have bad parts attached to them, called “payloads,” that can delete files or let bad people take control of users’ computers from afar.
| Read more: The history of the Internet
How a Worm Gets Around
A computer worm takes advantage of holes in a system to spread more quickly. It can move from one device to another in different ways, such as through an email attachment, a malicious link, or a local area network (LAN). Most computer worms spread in the following ways:
- Internet: Most devices connect to the internet through a network, which gives computer worms an easy way to spread. Once a worm gets into a computer, it can move to other computers on the LAN.
- Emails: Have you ever gotten a strange email from a stranger with a link or an attachment that you didn’t trust? Some hackers spread bad software, like worms, in this way. There are also worms that can make email programs like Outlook automatically send malware-infected emails to contacts.
- Platforms for sharing files: You can’t really tell if the file you’re downloading from a peer-to-peer file sharing platform has malware in it unless you know where it came from. Because of this, worms can spread quickly through these platforms.
- Instant messaging: Like malicious attachments to emails, computer worms could be hiding in instant messages as links or attachments that seem safe.
- Smartphones: Worms can easily spread through smartphones because we often connect them to multiple Wi-Fi networks. This could help worms spread faster.
- Downloads of the installer: Want to steal a piece of software? Be careful, because phishing websites may offer software installers that you can download that are actually malware.
- Removable drives: Flash drives and removable hard drives can get infected if they are plugged into a computer that already has a virus. The worm can then spread to other computers through removable drives that have been infected.
- Torrent: You might think you’re downloading a pirated copy of “The Avengers: Infinity War,” which is illegal, but it could actually be a worm. In the end, don’t steal anything and don’t use a VPN when torrenting content that isn’t protected by copy rights.
- IoT devices: It’s scary to think that our smart home gadgets could turn against us, but researchers say that this is a real possibility. Researchers were able to use a single smart bulb to spread a computer worm to other Zigbee IoT devices in a controlled setting.
What makes a worm different from a virus?
According to the “Security of the Internet” report published in 1996 by the CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, computer worms are “self-replicating programs that spread without human intervention once they are started.”
In contrast, the report said that computer viruses are also “self-replicating programs,” but they usually need the user to do something for them to accidentally spread to other programs or systems.
| Read more: What is a computer virus and how it works
Computer worm examples
Worms have been around since the Internet began. Several well-known cases got so big that they messed up networks and businesses in big ways.
The Morris worm
Most people agree that the Morris worm, which came out in 1988, was the first computer worm. But it is better known as the first worm to spread widely on the Internet, which was still young at the time.
The Morris worm was made by Robert Tappan Morris Jr., a graduate student at Cornell. He was supposedly trying to find out how many systems were connected to ARPANET, the network that came before the internet.
The Morris worm took advantage of flaws in several different Unix programs to infect a system more than once. This made it hard to get rid of before it caused a denial-of-service condition on the infected host. As many as 10% of the 60,000 systems that are thought to be connected to ARPANET were hit by the worm.
Storm worm
The Storm Worm is a 2007 email virus. The people got emails with fake news stories. This told about a storm wave that had never happened before and should have killed hundreds of people all over Europe. Over the past 10 years, more than 1.2 billion emails with the Storm worm have been sent. Experts think that at least one million computers are still infected, but their owners don’t know it.
| Read more: You can now check fact or fake news with chrome extension
The worm ILOVEYOU
The ILOVEYOU worm was one of the ones that did the most damage. It started in 2000 and spread malware through email attachments that looked like text files, scripts that ran in instant messaging chats, and executables that had the names of common system files changed.
Most people who were targeted by ILOVEYOU got it when they opened an email attachment, and the malware then sent itself to all of the victim’s Microsoft Outlook contacts.
After it was released on May 4, 2000, the malware was said to have affected as many as 45 million users. It spread so quickly that some businesses, like Ford Motor Company, had to temporarily shut down their email services. Damage from the worm was worth billions of dollars.
Sobig worm
There were different kinds of the Sobig worm, from Sobig.A to Sobig.F. It was attached to emails with common subject lines like “Thank You” or “Re: Details.” Once it got into a computer, the worm sent at least 20 emails to the user’s contacts to try to find its next victims.
Stuxnet
Stuxnet was discovered for the first time in 2010, and it spreads through file-sharing services. Security experts found out that the worm was made by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies to stop Iran from making nuclear weapons.
Stuxnet was spread by using flaws in the Windows operating system and USB drives to spread. This caused nuclear centrifuges to stop working.
WannaCry
WannaCry uses a worm to spread to Windows computers and encrypt files on PC hard drives. It started to spread in May 2017, and up to 150 countries and hundreds of thousands of computers were affected. Some of the targets were big businesses like FedEx, banks, and hospitals. Once the worm locked up a PC’s files, hackers contacted the owner and asked for money for a key to unlock the files. But even after paying, only a few of the victims got the key.
Researchers in security linked the hack to the Lazarus Group, which is a nation-state group with ties to North Korea. WannaCry cost its victims a lot of money, but security researcher Marcus Hutchins stopped it from spreading when he found a “kill switch” that stopped it from spreading further.
Nimda
Nimda was the first computer worm to change websites so that they offered malicious downloads. 4 It spread by sending out a lot of emails, and then it started to spread on LANs.
SQL worm
The way this computer worm spread was different from any other. It made a list of random IP addresses and emailed itself to them, hoping that their antivirus software wouldn’t stop it. Not long after the SQL worm spread in 2003, more than 75,000 computers that had been infected took part in DDoS attacks on several large websites without their owners’ knowledge.
MSBlast/Blaster:
When MSBlast/Blaster was first used, it showed two messages: “I just want to say LOVE YOU SAN” and “Billy Gates, why do you make this possible?” Fix your software and stop making money!” But as a side effect, it caused computers to shut down.
Code Red
The Code Red worm used infected computers to launch a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on the White House. The White House and its web servers had to change their IP addresses because of this attack.
Jerusalem/BlackBox worm
This was a type of worm that ate up computer resources. When it was turned on, it got rid of any program that was running on Friday the 13th of any year. It also made sick. exe files over and over until they got so big that the computer couldn’t handle them.
Worm vs. Virus vs. Trojan
A trojan virus is another type of malware that people often mix up with worms and viruses. Here’s a table that shows how these three kinds of malware are different.
| Worm | Virus | Trojan horse | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Consume resources, carry out malicious tasks | Carry out malicious tasks | Steal data |
| Spreads | When a copy of the virus-infected file or program is made, either on a storage device, in an email, or on the internet, the virus spreads. | Self-replicates without the user doing anything, and it can move from one device to another through email, LANs, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms. | When a copy of a program that has been hacked is made, |
| Speed | Moderate | Fast | Slow |
| Execution | When the file or program that has been infected is opened | As soon as it enters a device | Through a virus-ridden program that looks like a software utility. |
| Read more: What is trojan horse and how to prevent it
How to stop computer worms and get rid of them
Let’s learn how to get rid of computer worms now that we know what to look for.
How to Tell if a Worm Is on Your Device
The first step is to find out if your computer has a worm. Computers that have been infected often show signs like:
- A full hard drive
- Slow performance because resources are being used up
- Not enough files
- Hidden files or folders
- Files or programs that aren’t known
- Programs that run on their own or websites that open on their own
- Browsers that don’t work right
- Strange things happening with the program, like pop-up alerts, error messages, etc.
- Unauthorized emails sent to your email contacts
If your computer, phone, or tablet has one or more of these problems, you probably have a worm. You could use antivirus software to check if your device is safe.
| Read more: Best antivirus software for Windows Pc
How to remove a computer “Worm”
What do you do if there really is a worm?
1. Isolate the device
First, separate the device that is infected. Worms can spread through LANs, so remove the infected device from your LAN and disconnect it from the internet.
2. Scale the spread
Next, use antivirus software to check your other devices to see if the worm has already spread. If it has, put all the other infected devices in a separate place and do steps 3 and 4.
3. Remove the worm
The next thing to do is to get rid of the worm. Most antivirus tools that can find worms on a computer can also get rid of them. Once they find a worm, most antivirus programs can automatically put it in quarantine or get rid of it.
If you need to, you can use a special tool to get rid of worms. Some worms are more hard to get rid of. If your antivirus software can’t get rid of it, look on the internet for a tool that can get rid of the kind of worm that’s on your device. Your antivirus should be able to tell from the scan log what kind of worm it is.
Prevention is the best practice
Obviously, the best way to deal with computer worms is to stop them from happening. Here are some tips on how to keep computer worms away:
1. Be careful when opening attachments or links from emails. It’s best not to open a link or file in an email from someone you don’t know. It could be a phishing scam or a virus-spreading email blast. If you’re not sure if an email or attachment is safe, use your antivirus to scan the email or file first.
2. Don’t click on ads that pop up while you’re looking around. Worms can sneak into devices by putting adware on websites that are supposed to be safe. A common type of adware is an ad that says you’ve won something or that your computer or device has a virus.
3. If you want to torrent, use a VPN. If you want to download files from people you don’t know, don’t use peer-to-peer platforms. If you have to torrent something, use a VPN.
4. Software should be updated often. Keep your operating system and programs up to date to get rid of software vulnerabilities. If possible, enable automatic updates.
5. Change the passwords you use. Do not use the default password for anything, especially your router configuration, because some worms can get into devices by using the default password. Start by taking our test of how strong your password is, and then use our password guide to make better, stronger passwords.
6. Protect your files. Protect sensitive information on your devices and keep them safe from malware by encrypting important files.
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