COMPUTER SECURITY ( DEM 1233 )

CASE STUDY

KIRUBASHENY D/O SELVARAJU

DEM 5020078
BATCH 21

FACULTY OF ENFORCEMENT MANAGEMENT

NEWTON COLLEGE
2020
Case Study 1

A staff member in an advisory practice opened a file attached to an email received

one morning. It turned out the attachment contained a ‘worm’ that infected not only the staff
member’s PC, it also spread to all other PCs in the practice network. This malware caused all
PCs in the office to shut down.

The adviser needed to use the platform software that day ensures his clients
participated in a Corporate Action that was closing the following day.

With help from their Business Development Manager, the office worked through the
issue so they we able to log into the platform software to complete this critical work from a
home laptop that hadn’t been infected with the virus.

Find the one (1) causes of the virus and find four (4) how to prevent this type of fraud.
 Viruses, Trojan horse and worm are malicious programs that can cause
damage to information and computer. Malicious programs also called as malware is usually
classified into three characteristics which are propagation, mechanism it employs and
mechanism it requires to run.

A worm is like a virus that is designed to copy itself from one computer to
another, but it can travel alone and independently without user action. A great danger of
worms is their ability to replicate in great volume. A worm could send out copies of itself to
everyone listed in your email address book causing heavy network traffic that would slow
down the internet. An example of worm is Melissa.

The difference between worm and virus are worm operates through the
network while virus spreads through any medium. A worm spreads copies of itself as a stand
alone program. Virus spreads copies of itself as a program that attached to other programs.
Worms often infect computers by exploiting bugs in legitimate software. Typically, a high-
profile, trusted web page may be tampered with so it transmits (often invisibly) a carefully
corrupted document file to the user when the page is viewed. The corrupted file causes the
viewer program to crash, opening a door for a malicious program. To avoid/prevent, the
malicious program is usually a downloader which is very small program that later connects to
a remote computer over the internet to download a more substantial piece of malicious
software.

A computer worm infection spreads without user interaction. All that is

necessary is for the computer worm to become active on an infected system. Before
widespread use of networks, computer worms were spread through infected storage media,
such as floppy diskettes, which, when mounted on a system, would infect other storage
devices connected to the victim system. USB drives are still a common vector for computer
worms.

A good anti-virus program can protect to some extent, but it's not enough on
its own as it's hard to keep it up to date. Worms change hourly and it can take a day or more
to create and distribute an anti-virus update. A firewall is needed to help block the worm's
and should always browse the web with restricted rights such as a 'user', never as an
'administrator'. Being careful not to click on attachments or links in email or other messaging
applications that may expose systems to malicious software. Encrypt files to protect sensitive
data stored on computers, servers and mobile devicesBut the most effective way to prevent
worm is to turn off JavaScript for normal web browsing. JavaScript is a powerful tool that
makes websites interactive, and it's increasingly relied on by web designers. But it's also the
most common entry point that worms easily effect the computer.