Overview

This article will explain the ACSIA alert called "suspicious process".

Explaining the suspicious process

A "suspicious process" refers to a program or task running on a computer that exhibits unusual or questionable behavior. It raises concern because it might be attempting to perform harmful or unauthorized actions on the system.

Imagine we are using a computer, and suddenly we notice that the fan starts spinning loudly, the system slows down significantly, or we see a lot of network activity even though we are not actively using the internet. These signs might indicate the presence of a suspicious process.

In this example, a cybersecurity tool or system monitoring software like ACSIA might detect a process running in the background that was not initiated by us or any known software on your computer. This process might be trying to access sensitive data, make unauthorized changes to files, or communicate with external servers without your knowledge.

A real-world example of a suspicious process could be a type of malware known as "ransomware." Ransomware is a malicious program that encrypts your files and demands a ransom for their decryption. When ransomware runs on a computer, it behaves suspiciously by encrypting files in the background, slowing down your system, and displaying ransom notes on your screen.

ACSIA alerts you when a suspicious process is running. Here's all the information that ACSIA shows you in the Live Notification:

Also, on the right of the above screen, we can see the actions that a user can perform when we're notified by ACSIA of a suspicious process.