Should you worry about memory-only malware?

The recent Target data heist of more than 40 million credit card records has many worrying about the impact of memory-only malware. The Target malware, a variant of BlackPOS, is part of a Trojan horse family known as Trojan.POSRAM. After the initial exploitation, these programs simply load themselves into RAM — they don’t install themselves on the hard drive.

The lack of “software footprint” makes RAM-only malware programs elusive. Some people say they’re to be truly feared. Should we worry about them more than other malware programs? In a word: No.