Parasites: what you can't see can hurt you
Stefan Görling · Network Security · 2004
Antisocial renegades are skirting legal frontiers to exploit your private information. They use software parasites to display advertising and spam relays or to collect confidential information about you, which they sell. These are not teenage pranksters. They are professionals competing to exploit security flaws first. And they exploit social behaviour to engineer sophisticated, targeted attacks. But, being aware of the risks, we can work to reduce the threat.