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A virus is a
piece of software designed and written to adversely affect your computer by
altering the way it works without your knowledge or permission. In more
technical terms, a virus is a segment of program code that implants itself to
one of your executable files and spreads systematically from one file to
another. Computer viruses do not spontaneously generate: They must be written
and have a specific purpose. Usually a virus has two distinct functions: " Spreads itself from one file to another
without your input or knowledge. Technically, this is known as
self-replication and propagation. " Implements the symptom or damage planned
by the perpetrator. This could include erasing a disk, corrupting your
programs or just creating havoc on your computer. Technically, this is known
as the virus payload, which can be benign or malignant at
the whim of the virus creator. A benign virus
is one that is designed to do no real damage to your computer. For example, a
virus that conceals itself until some predetermined date or time and then
does nothing more than display some sort of message is considered benign. A malignant
virus is one that attempts to inflict malicious damage to your computer,
although the damage may not be intentional. There are a significant number of
viruses that cause damage due to poor programming and outright bugs in the
viral code. A malicious virus might alter one or more of your programs so
that it does not work, as it should. The infected program might terminate abnormally,
write incorrect information into your documents. Or, the virus might alter
the directory information on one of your system area. This might prevent the
partition from mounting, or you might not be able to launch one or more
programs, or programs might not be able to locate the documents you want to
open. Some of the
viruses identified are benign; however, a high percentage of them are very
malignant. Some of the more malignant viruses will erase your entire hard
disk, or delete files. Remeber! Your friend
can send you a virus. |
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