Well you are a new Windows User or old but you must have heard of Trojans, Viruses, and malwares. Those little nasty programs which resides in your system and send your private information to all hackers around the world, and compromises your security. So you installed anti Virus and Anti spyware to stay away from these. But what if they exist in your system even before you installed Antivirus, or they came with windows itself. In that case your antivirus can’t do anything because malwares exist in system before they came and can infect those programs itself.
How and From where Malware Came
Now Question is how the hell my windows got infected before I installed Antivirus? I freshly downloaded an ISO file containing Windows setup and installed it and then first thing I did was installing antivirus… But yes still your window is infected… How??
AntiVirus can prevent you from Virus, Trojan or Malwares only if your copy of windows is clean of those infections before installing antivirus. This is because of fact that These nasty programs are designed in such a way that if they successfully load themselves in a clean machine they prevent antivirus functioning. More important if they exist before installation of anti virus, they will embed with antivirus in such a way that antivirus will not be able to recognize them.
Well this is possible if you downloaded your Windows setup from a source which is not trusted like Torrents, LimeWire, Kazaa or any other peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Now as we know from where we get infection but how and Why??
Why Torrents ?
Torrent and other peer-to-peer file sharing applications and sites are now a boom and consuming a lot of Bandwidth over the internet. Torrents are a very popular and most widely used method of peer-to peer file sharing on internet. Reason behind its popularity is nothing but its efficiency, simplicity and flexibility of having public or private sources. It divides original files in small pieces and then those small pieces are distributed to different people through different sources. Once one person finish downloading one piece he starts sending same piece to multiple people. And you torrent client works like genius to join those pieces.
Because of this simple reason Hackers are now targeting these peer-to-peer networks for spreading malwares and Trojans. You believe it or not but Windows 7 RC and Beta build was spread like fire on Torrents site and according to an estimate there were 20 times more download through these channels compared to Microsoft’s own site.
Every Torrent site around the world is releasing these builds and they are trying to compete with each other in ranking and download. Now operating system like Windows 7 which is still in development stage and not many Security software are available for it, in such case they are more vulnerable than other but Old Operating systems are also prune to be infected. Hackers simply alter few of Setup files inside ISO and make them malware to get information from the user who is using these ISO. As Windows 7 is new and have several new features, by the time you find malware inside your installation it might be too late.
Prevention Tips
Ok Now we know the reason, how and from where these malware coming… So how come we can protect our self? If you are among the Torrent users or downloading windows from peer-to-peer networks, first thing you should look for is authentic source of such files. If you downloading Windows7 or Linux you can download them from their own site. If you looking for Windows Setup and have license for it but not the setup CD, what you can do is order a new CD from Microsoft’s site by placing your key. If you have a genuine key Microsoft provides CD’s for a small postage fee.
If you are in hurry look out for your friends and relatives, they might already having Authentic Setup CD which can be used, along with the keys you already have. If none of these options seem working for you then go and buy a new license but don’t use a pirated Windows downloaded from peer-to-peer network. Because it can cost more than what you will save by not buying genuine OS.