Risks of Executable Programs
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_/05/2020.
Introduction
A majority of private users and corporate employees whose devices and systems come with pre-installed operating systems, and relevant user software’s are usually not very concerned with knowing exactly what software bundles they have on their machines. As long as they are able to do their jobs and ensure their obligations are met, or use the hardware devices without any kind of complication, they need not worry (Shahzad, 2013). However, it is important for everyone to understand that is your system or device comes with a number of pre-installed bundled packages, you might be at risk from some Potentially Unwanted Applications.
Potentially Unwanted Applications which are sometimes also referred to as Potentially Unwanted Programs, are usually designed to lie deep within the operation and design of softwares without the immediate awareness of the user, which often runs counter to what is normally the expectations of a secure private users’ system or business environment. In particular, major concerns arise from the purpose and role played from such applications in the collection, storage of user data, and how they handle this data. In some cases, even how the software bundles exercise user privileges in allowing them to modify and monitor system settings.
There are several varieties of software bundles and sources of said software on a given system, which could immediately be classified as potentially unwanted. However, not all of these softwares are necessarily designed to cause havoc or any digital or physical damage to your devices. So to some extent, not all Potentially Unwanted Applications can automatically be classified to be malwares, as such. For instance, during the installation processes of most software products, if a user is not paying much attention to the installation instructions, they may end up installing additional software other than the ones needed. This is a marketing strategy, which is purely legal, that companies have grown to love and adopt.
They ensure that their products are pre-checked for installation in other software bundles, most preferably not from a competitor. Such that users who just rush into installing their software end up installing theirs too. Nevertheless, a majority of the Potentially Unwanted Applications are designed from such a beginning (Geniola, 2016) where a majority of them are derived from software’s created by legitimate developers whose programs are later corrupted by malicious users to be applicable in such ways that they can compromise the information of the user, or impair the entire system’s performance without the user unknowingly installing them.
A common source and example of Potentially Unwanted Applications is adware. In-line advertising, browser toolbars, and pop-up promotion, which in most cases offer products and services for sale to users, are among some of the most preferred media and sources of transmission for Potentially Unwanted Applications. A large number of these sinister breeds of adware’s and Dialers are specifically deployed and designed to lure unsuspecting users to their malicious website, or in some cases, prompts the users to go ahead and download their malwares.
References
Geniola, A. (2016). Architecture for analyzing Potentially Unwanted Applications.
Shahzad, R. M. K. (2013). Classification of Potentially Unwanted Programs Using Supervised Learning (Doctoral dissertation, Blekinge Institute of Technology).