A very important task is what we are going to recommend in this article, that is, the possibility of recognize malicious executable files, which at this very moment could be trying to enter your operating system from different sources to infect it and thus access different types of information that you work with daily.
These malicious executable files They usually enter in the first instance through the Internet and its different alternative means; For example, some of them could very well be an attachment that was sent to us via spam email; the first victims of this type of malicious executable files, are those users who do not have much computer knowledge or who perhaps are just getting into this world of personal computers with Windows.
How these malicious executable files are camouflaged
Just to mention a small example of how these are camouflaged. malicious executable files, we could remind the reader of that article in which we suggested the possibility of hide one image over another; As we had recommended in that article, someone could come to use an image of Flowers to hide a private one.
Something similar is what is achieved when working with these malicious executable files, a task that is usually scheduled by a hacker. In other words, if at a certain moment they have sent us an image or photograph (which may well be a jpeg format), it could contain a different extension (.exe) that to our eyes, is invisible.
There are different ways that we could use to recognize these malicious executable files, being the first of them, the one that we have suggested through the following image and where, it will only be enough to have to select the suspicious file (by making a single click) so that At the bottom of the window some information appears thereof.
As we can admire, the file refers to a music file (mp3), a situation that is contradicted in its information, since it isAt the bottom it describes it as a screensaver; If we double-click on said file, it could be executed and perhaps contaminate our operating system with some type of virus, Trojan horse, malware, Spyware or any other malicious code.
Malicious executable files hidden behind a photograph
This is the most common activity of a hacker, who usually disguise your file as malicious code after a "supposed photograph"; Those who have fallen into this trap do not notice any difference at that moment, although if they were very observant, they would be able to admire that a small window appears and disappears almost instantly when double-clicking, which means that the malicious code file was executed and perhaps, it infected our operating system.
In order to recognize if the file is actually an image or photograph, we could follow the same procedure that we suggested previously with the music file (mp3).
Show the extensions of our files in Windows
A better solution is that, that is, we should enter a certain area of the Windows configuration to make it the extensions of each of the files are shown with whom we are working.
To do this, we just have to go to the folder options, the image that we have placed at the top.
Later we went to the «see«, having to try to locate the box where it is suggested «hide file extensions«, which we should deactivate.
If we have carried out this process, we could select the image that we want to investigate again; there we will admire that the file is actually not what it seemed, since The file has a double extension, the last one (.exe) being the true one
With this, we would practically be corroborating that the file in question, actually it is an application, which suggests that if we double click on it, some type of action will be executed in the first instance, harming us immensely if it turns out to be a virus or any other type of malicious code file.
More information - File Camouflage, tool to hide private photos in singles