Social Network Security Assessment

Social Network Security Assessment

John Fulcher

CYB/110

Question 3

The scenario that happened involved the Win32/Virut malware that was notorious and wreaked havoc on one machine in the company (Microsoft). The malware was detected and stooped before it spread to any other computer on the network. It operates by modifying the software executables on the computers and spreads by targeting every software executable that opens and writes its own code that introduces a backdoor that allows hackers to access the system from remote servers. The malware is introduced when an infected executable is run on the machine and once it has been installed along with the innocent looking software, it copies itself to every other executable as soon as it is opened, meaning that it does not spread if no executable file is run. This, in turn, means that any software that is yet to be run is safe.

Upon realizing the corruption, which was done when an online scan using ESET antivirus was conducted, every executable was closed down (ESET). This allowed for antivirus to effectively isolate any executable affected and list it. Indeed, the executables were listed and it turned out that 7 executables had been affected already, these were immediately quarantined. Some of the software affected were office word and operating system executables. To effectively deal with the threat, I restored the quarantined files so that I could cleanly uninstall the software. After the uninstallation, the online scan was run again, since it was not vulnerable to infection through the executable corruption. This time around, every identified threat was removed and an operating system disc used to repair the corrupted operating system files. Finally, the ESET antivirus was installed so that such threats can be prevented before happening so as to reduce the extent of the damage. The affected software was then reinstalled and the system scanned with the offline antivirus and scheduled to automatically scan every day (Koret and Bachaalany).

Works Cited ESET. Free Virus Scan | Online Virus Scan from ESET. 2018. Web. 19 June 2018. <https://www.eset.com/us/home/online-scanner/>. Koret, Joxean and Elias Bachaalany. The Antivirus Hacker’s Handbook. 1st. Hoboken: Wiley, 2015. Print. Microsoft. Virus:Win32/Virut.BN. 15 September 2017. Web. 19 June 2018. <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclopedia-description?Name=Virus:Win32/Virut.BN>.