Hackers are increasingly resorting to more complex techniques to trick users into trying to infect them with malware. In addition to taking advantage of the typical security flaws, or tricks that can be hidden on different websites, they also take advantage of the most well-known and used applications within the PC environment to deceive users through phishing techniques and infect their computers with malware. And, for this, these are the programs that they use the most.
VirusTotal It is one of the best-known computer security companies. This company was created in Spain and later bought by Google. This page allows us to upload any file that we have on the computer and analyze it at the same time with 60 different antiviruses, being able to see the results of the analysis of each of them in a matter of seconds. But, in addition to this utility, it also offers many other services, especially designed for professionals.
Recently, this platform has published a report showing the most used techniques when it comes to infecting users with malware. And one of the ones that has grown the most lately is that of hide viruses and threats in installers of common programs in such a way that, when running them, the PC is compromised. It has also grown a lot, similar to what happens in email, the impersonation of programs. That is, create clones of popular programs that look like the originals, but actually hide other threats. And even create a malicious program that is assigns the same icon as the original program so that users make mistakes when clicking.
The most used programs to carry out these techniques are:
- Skype
- Adobe Acrobat
- VLC
- 7-Zip
- teamviewer
- CCleaner
- Microsoft Edge
- Steam
- zoom
Hackers have also started to make much more use of various cloud-based services and applications. In this way, the most used to deceive users are:
- iCloud
- Discord
- ms office
- ms outlook
- Steam
- Netflix
These malicious websites often mimic the appearance of real websites, even displaying the same favicon. However, its code has been specifically designed to steal users’ data or trick them into downloading malware.
How to protect ourselves from malware
To protect ourselves from these threats, the first thing we must do is make sure that whenever we download a program from the Internet, we do so from its official web pages. Never software download pages or links that we can find out there. The programs always from their official websites to ensure that we download an official version and, in addition, the latest version available.
Having an antivirus installed on your computer can also help you avoid taking unnecessary risks. A good antivirus will take care of analyzing everything that is loaded on our PC, and if it detects a threat in a program, it will allow us to block it.
Finally, to make sure that we have not already fallen into the clutches of pirates, it is essential to carry out a complete analysis of our PC with the antivirus. Thus, we will be able to search for any virus startup and, if it exists, eliminate it.
