ABSTRACT
For countries, the ability to penetrate the networks of other countries provides a potential wealth of information about strategic, tactical, economic, and political policies that can lead to decisive victories over their adversaries. One of the primary tools of a hacker is malware. Malware is a broad category that is usually associated with computer viruses, worms, Trojan Horses, and spyware. Software that may unintentionally harm a computer user is not considered malware. The origins of malware can be traced back to the late 1940s when a Hungarian-born mathematician by the name of John Von Neumann did research and lectures on what he termed "self-reproducing automata." A computer virus is a piece of code that attaches itself to a program or file. The vast majority attach to an executable file. A computer virus is only spread through some human action such as sending an e-mail or copying a file to some form of media.
