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Know what malware does, and how to stop it getting in.

Plain-English guidance for anyone in Australia, whether you look after one laptop or four hundred. What the threats are, the few defences that genuinely work, and free tools to safely check a file or link.

Explore the types of malware

How it gets in

Stolen credentialsNo malware needed to start. Phishing-resistant MFA is the control.
Unpatched systemsInternet-facing appliances, exploited within days of a patch.
Phishing and relay kitsDefeats every code-based MFA method. The route into invoice fraud.
Fake installersMalicious search ads and cracked software. The infostealer route.

Where do you want to start?

Understand malware

All malware pages →

  • Malware family reference

    One entry per family in a fixed shape, for looking something up: status, current examples, how it spreads and the defences that work.

  • Malware analysis tools

    Free tools for checking a file, link or email, what each is genuinely for, and which of them publish whatever you upload.

  • Test yourself: the malware quiz

    Six questions with the reasoning shown for each answer. Instant score, nothing stored, no sign-up.

  • Types of malware, explained

    Ransomware, infostealers, RATs, loaders, wipers and rootkits: what each kind of malware actually does, and how it gets onto a machine.

  • Ransomware: how an attack unfolds

    How a ransomware attack progresses from first access to extortion, why paying rarely ends it, and what to do in the first 24 hours.

Protect

All controls →

What actually stops malware, starting with the everyday habits and then the controls, in rough order of what each one buys you.

  • Avoid malware, and what to do if you click

    Plain-English malware advice for anyone, at work or at home. What to watch for, what to do if you have clicked something, and who to tell.

  • The Essential Eight

    ASD’s Essential Eight mitigation strategies and the four maturity levels, in plain English, with what each control actually requires in practice.

  • Business email compromise explained

    How BEC and invoice fraud work, why technical controls miss them, and the process changes that actually stop the payment going out.

  • MFA that actually resists phishing

    Why SMS codes and push prompts get defeated, what phishing-resistant MFA means in practice, and which accounts to protect first.

Awareness

Posters and resources →

Free printable posters and ready-to-send comms, for running this inside an organisation. Australian numbers, CC BY licensed, no sign-up.

  • Ready-to-send staff comms

    Copy-paste email and intranet templates for malware awareness: new starters, post-incident notices, and awareness month.

  • Cyber Security Awareness Month kit

    A four-week plan for Cyber Security Awareness Month in October, using free Australian posters, staff tips and ready-to-send comms.

Reference

  • Glossary

    Plain-English definitions of the Australian cyber security and privacy terms that appear in reporting obligations, advisories and legislation.

  • About this site

    What malware.com.au is, how the information here is sourced and verified, and the limits of what a reference site can tell you.

  • For AI agents and assistants

    How to read malware.com.au as a machine: llms.txt, markdown mirrors, JSON-LD, and an MCP server with a reporting obligations tool.

  • Australian security community

    Conferences, meetups and groups where Australians learn security in person. Dates and links checked, with a note on what is dormant.

Common questions

What are the main types of malware?

The categories that matter in practice are ransomware, infostealers, loaders, remote access trojans, banking trojans, mobile malware, wipers, cryptominers, rootkits and stalkerware. Phishing and relay kits belong on the same list, even though nothing runs on your machine: they are the way credentials and sessions are stolen in the first place. The categories overlap constantly: a loader fetches an infostealer, whose stolen credentials are sold to a group that later deploys ransomware.

How does malware usually get in?

Most often through stolen credentials, or an unpatched internet-facing system, and neither of those involves a user mistake. Phishing and fake installers matter too, but the first two are why awareness training on its own cannot address the problem.

How do I check a file or a link safely?

Search the hash or the URL before you upload anything. Most public scanners share what you submit: VirusTotal makes uploads available to paying subscribers, and urlscan.io publishes scans by default. Uploading a document that contains personal information is a disclosure of that information. The tools directory on this site marks what each service does with whatever you give it.