Computer Viruses and their Effects on your PC
Table of Contents
What is a Virus? .............................................1
HOW A VIRUS INFECTS YOUR SYSTEM: .............................2
HOW DOES A VIRUS SPREAD? .....................................3
BIGGEST MYTH: "I BUY ALL OF MY PROGRAMS ON CD ROM FROM THE
STORE". STORE BOUGHT SOFTWARE NEVER CONTAINS VIRUSES.... 3
INFECTION (DAMAGES) ..........................................4
PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER, NOW!! ................................ 5
A virus is an independent program that reproduces itself. It can attach itself to other programs and make copies of itself (i.e., companion viruses).
It can damage or corrupt data, or lower the performance of your system by using resources like memory or disk space. A virus can be annoying or it can cost you lots of cold hard cash. A virus is just another name for a class of programs.
They do anything that another program can. The only distinguishing characteristic is the program has ability to reproduce and infect other programs.
Is a computer virus similar to a human virus? Below is a chart that will show the similarities.
Comparing Biological Viruses & Human Viruses
Human Virus Effects
Attack specific body cells' Modify the genetic information of a cell other than previous one. It performs tasks. New viruses grow in the infected cell itself. An infected program may not exhibit symptoms for a while. Not all cells with which the virus contact are infected. Viruses can mutate and thus cannot clearly be diagnosed. Infected cells aren't infected more than once by the same cell.
Computer Virus Effects
Attack specific programs (*.com,*.exe) Manipulate the program: The infected program produces virus programs. The infected program can work without error for a long time. Program can be made immune against certain viruses. Virus program can modify themselves & possibly escape detection this way. Programs are infected only once by most viruses.
There are many ways a virus can infect you system. One way is, if the virus is a file infecting virus, when you run a file infected with that virus.
This particular kind of virus can only infect if YOU run the program! This virus targets COM and EXE files, but have also been found in other executable files. some viruses are memory resident which will infect every file run after that one. Other are “direct action” injectors that immediately infect other files on your hard drive then leave. Another way viruses infect your system is if they are polymorphic. Polymorphism is where the virus changes itself with every infection so it is harder to find. Also, virus writers have come up with a virus called a multipartite virus. This virus can infect boot sectors and the master boot record as well as files therefore enables it to attack more targets,
Viral infections are caused by different kinds of viruses. They have a simple structure and are tinier than bacteria by a landslide. Viruses can only survive in a host, and are unable to reproduce by themselves, instead they use the host’s DNA to multiply and repair. Most viruses are harmful to the human body and cause disease. They direct themselves to infect the cells in the liver, respiratory system, and blood. Which cause diseases like the flu, chickenpox, Aids, herpes, etcetera. Viruses are also involved in many forms of cancer. They
A virus is an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat. It is too small to be seen by light microscopy and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host. One virus that has received global attention over the last thirty years or so is the HIV/AIDS virus. This virus attacks the body’s immune system, which in turn stops the body’s ability to be able to fight off illness. Thus, people who contract HIV/AIDS are susceptible to death by sicknesses that a healthy individual is able to recover from easily.
Viruses can do many different things to a body, they can destroy, corrupt, and take over cells in the body. They can damage parts of the body or make your body destroy itself, viruses are dangerous but sometimes can be cured. Viruses do not have the enzymes needed to carry out life so they use other’s cells, called a host cell, to live and to perform their functions, such as reproduction. Viruses inject their genetic instructions into a cell causing the cell to create viruses materials, which become new viruses, and usually break the side of the cell destroying it. The viruses can cause parts of the brain to react and activate, causing behavioral changes. For example a disease called Toxoplasmosis can alter rat behavior, while it affects humans in a different way than rats, its an example of what viruses can do. The virus switches the triggers that causes neuronal reactions for fear and arousal, so that what causes fear actually cuses arousal. This is so that the rat gets eaten by a cat and a parasite (which injects the virus) inside the rat can reproduce in a cat. A virus doesn’t simply just head to the brain to cause these things, as there is a “shield” around the brain that protects it from everything. This “shield” is called the Blood Brain Barrier, the BBB, which molecul...
Few people are able to clear the virus from their blood, which is necessary, to be
At the Aim Higher College there have been recently discovered malware on the campus systems that are due to many recent attacks. I used an Anti-virus protection software called AVG on the computer systems on campus and ran a whole computer scan. The results came back very quick of numbers of malware being high and medium priorities that these should not be taken lightly. Furthermore, the scan found many viruses, Trojans, and malicious software and applications.
Viruses can be transmitted in many ways. Being in contact with an infected person will most likely transfer the virus. One can also obtain the virus through swallowing, inhaling, and unsafe sex. Poor hygiene and eating habits usually increase the risk of catching a viral infection. Contracting a viral infection is followed by adverse s...
Virus- An infectious agent found in virtually all life forms, including humans, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Viruses touch us every day through water, food, physical contact, blood, animals, or even, the air you breathe. Although most are harmless, there are some that are not.... ...
I decided to read the book by David Harley called Viruses Revealed. This book goes into great detail about the different kinds of viruses and virus mechanisms, the solutions to these viruses, studies on different cases of viruses and then the social aspects of viruses. In the first part of the book, Harley talks about the problems with viruses. A virus is a program that infects other programs to modify them. “Infecting means that a virus will insert itself into the chain of command” (Harley). The virus structure was defined into three different parts: Infection, Payload, and Trigger. The infection is defined as the way or ways in which the virus spreads. The payload is defined as what the virus does besides duplicating itself. Trigger is defined as the procedure that decides whether or not the payload is necessary. Harley also talks about the difference between damage versus infection. The major difference between the two is that many users have infected documents or applications on their computer. Whether or not those applications are run is the difference between the two. In part one Harley also converses about Trojan Horses. Trojan horses are normally known as a virus, but he shoots that down. Harley says that Trojan Horses are normally not viruses, but just a worm that goes from computer to computer. After talking about different kinds of viruses and worms, he goes into Anti-Virus softwares. There are two different kinds of anti-viruses. One being virus-specific. Virus-specific means that every time a virus is found on your computer, it is identified but not detected. Generic scanners do the opposite. Generic scanners detect viruses but do not identify them.
The history of cybercrime goes back to 1971 and the first computer virus called the Creeper which was created by Bob H. Thomas, who was a BBN engineer (Dalakov, Meltzer, and Phillips). BBN which stands for Bolt, Beranek and Newman, is now Raytheon BBN Technologies (“About”, Dalakov). A computer virus is a program that is created to cause damage to a computer or perform other malicious acts (204). The Creeper virus was designed to infect the ARPANET network. The ARPANET, which stands for Advance Research Projects Agency was set up by the U.S. Government as an agency in 1969 to provide a network of computers that would connect various academic and research organizations; it was the predecessor of the Internet (“Internet”, Morley, and Parker).
One of them could be the system could crash as if not saved data can
Malicious software in short known as Malware. It is also known as computer Contaminant. Similar to biological parasite, malware also reside in a Host. Malware will get installed on host without user’s consent. Generally a software is considered malware based on the intent of the creator...
The first virus I researched was that of HIV. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. To better break it down, the “H’ stands for human because this particular virus can only infect humans. No other animal on earth can be infected by HIV. The “I” stands for Immunodeficiency because the virus weakens the immune system. Lastly, the V stands for virus because it can only reproduce by taking over a cell in the body of its host. HIV is very common to other viruses we see every day such as the flu, or common cold. The main difference is that when you get a virus such as the flu, your immune system will soon be able to defeat that virus and you will become healthy again. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the HIV virus. The immune system is not able to defeat this virus so once it enters your body you have it for the rest of your life. However, HIV has been known to hide for long periods of time. For this to happen it must attack certain parts of your immune system. If the HIV virus attacks your T-cells or CD4 cells, it will remain dormant and could hide for a very long time. These cells are used for fighting infe...
Virus is one of the most common malware. Unlike spyware, virus is largely designed to harm useful programs or wreck down an entire operating system. There are many ways through which virus may enter a computer. The most common way is via email attachments. A...
What is the “MALWARE”? A malware refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system. In Spanish, "mal" is a prefix that means "bad," making the term "bad ware" .Malware includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and spyware. Viruses, for example, can cause havoc on a computer's hard drive by deleting files or directory information. Spyware can gather data from a user's system without the user knowing it. This can include anything from the Web pages a user visits to personal information, such as credit card numbers.
Malware can survive in a number of ways say different sizes, shapes and also the purpose ranging from viruses to spyware and to bots. Malware in general is classified into two types. They are the concealing malware and infectious malware. In case of infectious malware, the malware code is said to spread all over which means that the software code shall replicate from one user to another and this goes on. In infectious malware, we need to consider two cases, which are called the viruses and the worms. Viruses are termed as the software that has executables within itself and causes the executables to spread when it is run. The second case called worms is a software which infects a computer and then spreads to others.