{"id":52833,"date":"2016-03-14T21:36:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T21:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/?p=52833"},"modified":"2016-05-23T17:12:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:12:32","slug":"what-are-polymorphic-viruses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/what-are-polymorphic-viruses\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Polymorphic Viruses?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">Polymorphic viruses are the reason why malware is on the rise\u2026<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">By changing one small component in the malware, a whole new virus is born.\u00a0 These\u00a0are known as polymorphic viruses.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the detection for these viruses is incredibly difficult, because the malware is consistently changing to prevent detection.\u00a0 Once the malware is identified by traditional anti-virus programs, it changes itself to become a new undetectable virus. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">For traditional anti-virus programs, this is a problem because of their malware detection methods.\u00a0 Most anti-virus programs use a blacklist approach.\u00a0 This means they have a list of all the known bad programs\/files and blocks them from running on your PC.\u00a0 However, as discussed earlier, these polymorphic viruses are always changing, which makes the latest version unknown.\u00a0 Thus, withholding the ability to bypass your anti-virus\u2019s blacklisting technology.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">One of the best ways to prevent this, is to find an anti-virus software that has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">whitelisting<\/a> technology.\u00a0 Meaning, it uses a list of all the known good programs and only allows them to run.\u00a0 By taking this backwards approach, the anti-virus software is able to effectively block polymorphic viruses because no matter what they change to, they still are not a known safe program.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri;\">According to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/polymorphic-malware-on-the-rise-501491.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Softpedia<\/a>, there was an 85.7% decrease in identifiable files per malware family, and a 99.1% decrease in identifiable malware in potentially unwanted applications from 2014 to 2015.\u00a0 They report: <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;\">\u201c\u2026this doesn&#8217;t mean that the file instances don&#8217;t exist, but the use of polymorphic distribution models makes detection of all variants much harder.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polymorphic viruses are the reason why malware is on the rise\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":45528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4522,12,183,4959],"tags":[4920],"class_list":["post-52833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc-safety-2","category-the-pit-blog","category-tips","category-whitelisting","tag-polymorphic-viruses"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What Are Polymorphic Viruses?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Polymorphic viruses are the reason why malware is on the rise.\u00a0 By changing one small component in the malware, a whole new virus is born...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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