Viruses

19Aug08

Viruses

A computer virus is a computer program that can infect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly evolved) copy of it. Note that a program does not have to perform outright damage (such as deleting or corrupting files) in order to be called a “virus”.

Many people use the term loosely to cover any sort of program that tries to hide its (malicious) function and tries to spread onto as many computers as possible. Viruses are very dangerous; they are spreading faster than they are being stopped, and even the least harmful of viruses could be fatal. For example, a virus that stops a computer and displays a message, in the context of a hospital life-support computer, could be fatal. Even the creator of a virus cannot stop it once it is “in the wild”.

The main types of PC viruses

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Tags: cybercrime, virus