COMPUTER VIRUSES

A Computer virus is a program designed to alter or destroy the data stored on a Computer
system. Computer viruses can be passed from one to another on floppy disks, over networks
and remote modem connections. These include worms, Trojan horse, time bombs, file
infectors, macro viruses, and boot sector viruses.
orm is a program whose
purpose is to duplicate
itself. An effective worm
will fill entire disks with copies of itself,
and it can spread to multiple
he middle of a useful program.
The program does do something
useful but also, via the Trojan
horse the background. Sometime a Trojan
horse is disguised as a game or a utility
program that users will find appealing,
them when the users are running the
game, they discover that they have
loaded another animal entirely. A Trojan
horse may erase the data on the hard disk
or cause other damage.
ime bombs and logic bombs are
designed to sit harmlessly on a
system until certain even or date
causes the program to become active.
Some bombs are activated by a date, a
change to a file, or a particular action
taken by a user or a program. This virus is
designed to destroy the contents of any
hard disk that it is hidden on.
ile Infectors: Most viruses are
file infectors that spread from
program and do damage to files
(such as Exe or Com files) data
and directories. A file infector virus hidden
on a floppy disk will transfer itself to any
hard disk.
acro virus is designed to
infect a specific type of
document file, such as
Microsoft word or excel files. These types
of documents can include macro, which
are small programs that execute
commands.
oot sector virus: Regards as one
of the most hostile type of virus,
a boot sector virus infects the
boot record of a hard of floppy
disk. (A boot sector is a special area of a
disk that stores essential files the
computer access during startup). The virus
moves the boot sectors data to a
different part of the disk or can make the
data stores on the disk inaccessible. When
the computer is started, the virus copies
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Horse refers
to illegal
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itself into memory where it can hide and
infect other disks.