Internet Worms

An internet worm is a program that exploits vulnerabilities in a computer operating system or program. A common vulnerability is a buffer overflow. Internet worms use techniques similar to those used by hackers to attack your system.  

Unlike an e-mail virus or worm that enters your system as an attachment, an internet worm penetrates your system directly via your internet connection. It does this by scanning the internet for vulnerable systems, and once found it inserts malicious code directly into memory. The affected computer is then used a proxy to scan for other vulnerable hosts.

A worm may itself cause damage, or act as a delivery mechanism for other malicious programs such as viruses, backdoors or key loggers.

Traditional anti-virus software rely on scanning e-mail attachments to discover viruses and worms, and therefore may not detect internet worms.

Prevx Home stops your computer from being infected by worms by preventing them from writing to your computer's file system or registry. Unlike many anti-virus products it protects you against known and unknown threats, without the need for signature updates.

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