"March 28, 2008 (Computerworld) Hannaford Bros. Co. disclosed this week that the intruders who stole up to 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers from the grocer's systems did so by planting malware programs on servers at each of its stores in New England, New York and Florida."
I highlighted the word malware in the Computerworld article above. While most of us have heard of spyware, malware is not a very commonly used word, but you get the idea as soon as you see it. Malware is malicious software.
In all 3 cases, spyware, malware, and adware, other people are attempting to plant some program in our computer that is obviously up to no good.
In the document linked to in my March 4 post, I advocated the use of three programs: AdAware, Spybot, and Windows Defender. These are three FREE programs which when used together will enable you to keep your system free of spyware, malware, and adware.
This week I was reminded of just how valuable these tools are when I used them to clean up a customer's heavily infected machine. Between the two of them, AdAware and Spybot, more than 150 incidents were removed, and many of these were definitely what you would call malicious and serious. I am sure my customer would agree.
With the addition of Windows Defender and the regular use of Spybot and AdAware, this computer will remain trouble-free. In light of the news from Hannaford, it might be worth your while to revisit my white paper: The Best Offense is a Good Defense. This white paper includes detailed instructions for downloading, installing, and using Spybot.
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