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1. Suppose you observe that your home PC is responding very slowly to informatio

ID: 3682750 • Letter: 1

Question

1. Suppose you observe that your home PC is responding very slowly to information requests from the net. And then you further observe that your network gateway shows high levels of network activity, even though you have closed your email client, Web browser, and other programs that access the net. What types of malware could cause these symptoms? Discuss how the malware might have gained access to your system. What steps can you take to check whether this has occurred? If you do identify malware on your PC, how can you restore it to safe operation?

Explanation / Answer

It is a known fact that malware has the tendency to slow down your operating system, your Internet speed or the speed of your applications.

If you notice something like this and you are not using any resource-heavy program or application, check first for other causes. It may be a lack of RAM memory, a fragmented system, a lack of space on your hard drive or maybe a hardware issue affecting your drive.

If you have already verified these possible causes and all seemed fine, maybe you should start suspecting a malware issue on the system.

Viruses and malware can slow down your computer, as well as causing other problems like not allowing you to access the internet or programs installed on your computer.