Virus infection from a Web page

Virus infection from a Web page

How can you know ahead of time if a Web page is infected with a virus? Once you have a virus, how can you stop it from wrecking your computer?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

Host-based intrustion-detection systems such as Tripwire, Axent ITA and Enterasys-Dragon Squire offer excellent support for the monitoring of Web pages for malicious changes by hackers or virus-related attacks. These products would notify and correct the problem by copying the correct Web page back to the server.

Halting the spread of a virus should be done with the proper tools, such as antivirus products. These products needs to be updated as the new signatures are releasted from vendors, not at a later date. I recommend purchasing a subscription to the sigature updates where the vendor sends them and notifies you at the same time of a new virus. Otherwise, the manual method is much too slow when new viruses are released.

Damage to your systems is only halted with the proper protective measures and alerting software such as IDS or antivirus software properly configured. Damage can only be measured by the amount of effort you place into those systems and the importantance of maintance.


For more information on this topic, check out these other SearchSecurity.com resources:
Best Web Links: Intrusion detection
Best Web Links: Common vulnerabilities and prevention tactics


This was first published in December 2001