What is Malware?

Any software with a malicious intent may be called a Malware. The term ‘Malware’ is used to refer to the software that is designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. Malaware is a generic term used by the security experts to include a variety of harmful software or program code that are intrusive, hostile or annoying to the end-user and it covers all the common security threats such as a virus, worm, trojan horse, spyware etc. The term Malware is derived from a combination of the words "MALicious" and "softWARE".

The perceived intent of the creator is a prime consideration in designating a particular software as malware. Malware includes computer viruses, spyware, trojan horses, worms, dishonest adware, and other unwanted and malicious software. However, malware should not be confused with defective software that has a legitimate purpose but contains harmful bugs due to a poor design.

A majority of the common computer users are unfamiliar with this generic term and therefore never use it. Instead, the term ‘computer virus’ is used in common parlance and usually in the general media to describe all kinds of malware, despite the fact that all malware cannot be categorized as a virus. Another common term used for malware is Badware. It refers to the bad characteristics of malware and is most likely a corruption of the term ‘Malware’.

Emmanuel Aigbehi