Computer Viruses and their Effects on the Computer
In our health-conscious society, viruses of any type are an enemy. Computer viruses are especially pernicious. They can and do strike any unprotected computer system, with results that range from merely annoying to the disastrous, time-consuming and expensive loss of software and data. And with corporations increasingly using computers for enterprise-wide, business-critical computing, the costs of virus-induced down-time are growing along with the threat from viruses themselves. Concern is justified - but unbridled paranoia is not. Just as proper diet, exercise and preventative health care can add years to your life, prudent and cost-effective anti-virus strategies can minimize your exposure to computer viruses.
Because Symantec is the world's largest supplier of anti-virus technology, we are uniquely able to offer comprehensive virus protection options and service plans. As an introduction, we offer this white paper series. In concise text, graphs and illustrations, we will give you a overview of:
A history of computer viruses
Who writes viruses - and how they can reach you
The early warning symptoms of virus infection
The real numbers behind the growth of viruses and their costs
How viruses work - and how virus protection can stop them
Anti-virus tools from Symantec for enterprise-wide, multi-platform, state-of-the-art protection
What, Exactly, Is A Computer Virus?
A computer virus is a program designed to replicate and spread, generally with the victim being oblivious to its existence. Computer viruses spread by attaching themselves to other programs (e.g., word processors or spreadsheets application files) or to the boot sector of a disk. When an infected file is activated - or executed - or when the computer is started from an infected disk, the virus itself is also executed. Often, it lurks in computer memory, waiting to infect the next program that is activated, or the next disk that is accessed.
What makes viruses dangerous is their ability to perform an event. While some
events are benign (e.g. displaying a message on a certain date) and others annoying (e.g., slowing performance or altering the screen display), some viruses can be catastrophic by damaging files, destroying data and crashing systems.
How Do Infections Spread?
Viruses come from a variety of sources. Because a virus is software code, it can be transmitted along with any legitimate software that enters your environment:
In a 1991 study of major U.S. and Canadian computer users by the market research firm Dataquest for the National Computer Security Association, most users blamed an infected diskette (87 percent).
Bob is at the skate park, showing off his skills as a skateboarder. With one wrong move, he fell off of his skateboard, and his knee scrapped on the concrete, causing a big gash on his knee. A virus enters in the knee, and it has a mission. Its mission is to infect every organ in Bob's body.
The word virus comes from the Latin word, poison. A virus infects a cell and into it, inserts its DNA. The virus then multiplies inside the cell and when enough of the virus has been produced, the newly formed viruses will break out into the body of the host, destroying the cell in the process. Variola major and Variol...
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
You know they're right. Yet for one reason or another, you're not running antivirus software, or you are but it's not up to date. Maybe you turned off your virus scanner because it conflicted with another program. Maybe you got tired of upgrading after you bought Norton Antivirus 2001, 2002, and 2003. Or maybe your annual subscription of virus definitions recently expired, and you've put off renewing.
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...
In today’s rapidly expanding computer world, growing demands for functionality under shorter time frames have become common place. Software growth has also provided newer economic rewards and possibilities for many companies. As software has become more pervasive in function and usage, security problems regarding the products has become a real issue. Viruses, worms, and hackers have become more dangerous as computers have become more connected and require more complex software. Software, unfortunately, will always be subject to flaws and bugs. Software coding is a distinctly human process and hence subject to human error. It is precisely such errors prevalent within crucial software that can be exploited by malicious individuals. The presence of such hackers is an unwelcome and unfortunate reality; it is the responsibility therefore, of software creators to take into account potential security risks in creating their products. However, reducing security risks means more resources and time spent in a product. For commercial companies, the dilemma exists between providing a safe product and protecting their bottom line. Nonetheless, practical solutions exist for providing security to the software user, involving responsible usage from the user as well as an informative approach from the software companies.
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).
The virus is defined as a piece of code that can copy itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data. At that time viruses were not known to be used to attack countries, most viruses were motivated by money and moral beliefs. In the early 2000s Iran was gaining nuclear power and the U.S. knew they were in the wrong hands. As the rise of viruses grew the CIA knew they could take advantage of cyber-attacks. Couple years later they had a lethal virus capable of damaging uranium plants all over Iran.
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...
Malicious code is a real danger to modern systems. Most systems nowadays do not work in isolation; they are more likely to be connected to other systems and sometimes they can even be dependent on them. Therefore an attack on one of the systems in the network is a potential attacking attempt to any other systems, with which it is interacting. Therefore, it is inevitable for any networked or Internet-connected computers to deal with malicious code attacks at some point. Businesses lose billions of dollars each year because of malicious code attacks. Responding to the attack and restoring all the data on the computers is a time-consuming and expensive task. It is a much better practice to try preventing it through organizing and maintaining effective defenses. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is no one general solution that can help to prevent all the attacks. Attackers are constantly looking for new ways to take advantage of systems’ vulnerabilities and find new ones. That’s why organizations have to not only defend themselves against existing attack methods, but also try to predict and prevent new attacking techniques. It means that computer and network security is a never-ending challenge and expense.
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.