ITPEC FE Morning October 2020 Question 40

Spreads the infection by itself over the network and removable media — a worm copies itself to other computers; a Trojan horse does not replicate.

A worm is a standalone program that finds new victims on its own, through network shares, email, software vulnerabilities or USB drives, so one infection can spread across an organisation without anyone running it. A Trojan horse poses as a useful program and does harm only on the computer where the user installed it.

Answer (b)

Why not others:

• •(a) — encrypting files so that they cannot be read is what ransomware does, whether it arrives as a worm or a Trojan horse
• •(c) — running as an independent program is true of both a worm and a Trojan horse (it is what sets them apart from a virus, which needs a host program), so it does not distinguish them
• •(d) — lying dormant until a date or condition is reached describes a logic bomb

Key rule: Classify malware by how it spreads: a virus needs a host program, a worm spreads itself, a Trojan horse relies on the user installing it.

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