For Home View all Malwarebytes products. At Malwarebytes, we're all for precision — especially when it comes to two commonly confused cybersecurity concepts that get used interchangeably all the time: antivirus and anti-malware.
Sure, both refer to cybersecurity software, but what do these terms actually mean? What is the difference between antiviruses and anti-malware, and are they both still relevant in dealing with today's online digital threats? Let's take a deep dive into the world of cybersecurity semantics and unpack these terms one at a time:. For the most part, antivirus software and anti-malware software are the same things. They both refer to computer security software designed to detect, protect against, and remove malicious software.
Contrary to what the name might suggest, antivirus software protects against more than viruses — it just uses a slightly antiquated name to describe what it does. Anti-malware software is also designed to protect against viruses; it just uses a more modern name that encompasses all kinds of malicious software, including viruses. That being said, anti-malware can stop an online viral infection from happening and remove infected files.
However, anti-malware isn't necessarily equipped to restore files that have been changed or replaced by a virus. Both antivirus software and anti-malware fall under the broader term " cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, or computer security, is a catchall term for any strategy for protecting one's system from malicious attacks, including both antiviruses and anti-malware. These attacks often aim to do things like hold your computer hostage, steal system resources as in a botnet , record your passwords and usernames, and a whole host of other bad things.
Such attacks might occur via your hardware like a backdoor or through your software like an exploit. Cybersecurity threats and their countermeasures are varied and nuanced nowadays, but the marketplace naturally strives for simplicity when communicating to consumers.
In reality, computer viruses are just one type of cyberthreat that happened to be popular when computers were in their infancy. They're far from the most common threat today, but the name stuck.
It's a bit like calling every disease a cold. They both refer to software designed to detect, protect against, and remove malicious software.
It needs to be initiated by an unsuspecting user. Triggering a virus can be as simple as opening a malicious email attachment malspam , launching an infected program, or viewing an ad on a malicious site adware. Once that happens, the virus tries to spread to other systems on the computer's network or in the user's list of contacts. It must be self-replicating. If the software doesn't self-replicate, it's not a virus. This process of self-replication can happen by modifying or completely replacing other files on the user's system.
Either way, the resulting file must show the same behavior as the original virus. Computer viruses have been around for decades. Early viruses occurred on pre-personal computer platforms in the s. However, the history of modern viruses begins with a program called Elk Cloner , which started infecting Apple II systems in Disseminated via infected floppy disks, the virus itself was harmless, but it spread to all disks attached to a system.
It spread so quickly that most cybersecurity experts consider it the first large-scale computer virus outbreak in history. Early viruses like Elk Cloner were mostly designed as pranks. Their creators were in it for notoriety and bragging rights. However, by the early s, adolescent mischief had evolved into harmful intent. PC users experienced an onslaught of viruses designed to destroy data, slow down system resources, and log keystrokes also known as a keylogger.
The need for countermeasures led to the development of the first antivirus software programs. Early online antiviruses were exclusively reactive.
They could only detect infections after they took place. Moreover, the first antivirus programs identified viruses by the relatively primitive technique of looking for their signature characteristics.
However, if the attacker changed the file name, the computer antivirus might not be as effective. While early antivirus software could also recognize specific digital fingerprints or patterns, such as code sequences in network traffic or known harmful instruction sequences, they were always playing catch up.
Early antiviruses using signature-based strategies could easily detect known viruses, but they were unable to detect new attacks. Instead, a new virus had to be isolated and analyzed to determine its signature, and subsequently added to the list of known viruses.
Those using antiviruses online had to regularly download an ever-growing database file consisting of hundreds of thousands of signatures. Even so, new viruses that got out ahead of database updates left a significant percentage of devices unprotected. The result was a constant race to keep up with the evolving landscape of threats as new viruses were created and released into the wild. PC viruses today are more of a legacy threat than an ongoing risk to computer users. They've been around for decades and have not substantially changed.
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