Computer Virus Essay

754 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Solution to computer viruses

Introduction This report will look at viruses. It will look at what a virus is and what they do it will also look at why people create viruses and for what purpose. The report will also look at examples of famous well known viruses and the ways you can defend against viruses. What is a Virus? Firstly this report will look at the definition of a computer virus. This definition taken from Microsoft (n.d.) tells us what a virus is “Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation.” This definition tells us that viruses are designed to spread from one computer to another this could be through email attachments sent between friends or a multitude of …show more content…

These are all very different reasons as to why someone may create a virus. Although usually they are motivated to do it by financial gain this could be done by stealing peoples bank passwords with a virus hidden in an email attachment that when opened records what people type and sends it to the virus …show more content…

However there are some viruses that are created as a bit of fun by some developers. An example given by Georgi Dalakov (n.d.) in an article on History-Computer.com is the Creeper virus. This virus was designed to not be destructive at all by deleting data or other things that would really affect the user but just displayed a message on the user’s screen which would be little more than an annoyance. The message that was displayed is “I’M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN”. This virus was created around 1970 by Robert Thomas before the term computer virus existed so some credit this as the first example of a self-replicating computer

Show More
Related

  • Computer Misuse Act Essay

    1226 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lately,there are many examples about how Computer Misuse Act preventing crime and facilitating a prosecution. Lewis Stephen Martin,21 years old, launched DOS attacks on the websites of Kent Police and universities of Oxford and Cambridge between 29 January and 2 February 2012. The police website and Cambridge University was offline more than an hour and Oxford University was offline aproximately 30 minuts. Giulty plea of unauthorised modification,unautorised access and obtained information without autorization. Sentenced to two years of imprisonment ( Computer Misuse Act 1990, s 1 : Unauthorised accesss, s 3 : Unauthorised modification; s 3A : Making, supplying or obtaining articles for use in offence under section 1 or 3 ).

    Read More

  • Technology: Legal Issues In Australia

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Computers have become a big part of our lives. They are being used more and more and the Internet has brought with it a big amount of computer criminals. In 1988, Victoria created the first Australian computer crime laws.

    Read More

  • Trojans,Worms, and Viruses: What Are They and What Can You Do to Stop Them

    1690 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine this; you are sitting at your desk looking at a bunch of pictures. Just a normal scene, what could go wrong? Suddenly, you’re attacked by deadly things that are trying to steal your personal information like your credit card numbers, email address, all your passwords, everything. Could this be the work of ninjas? No (bet that is what you first thought though). What about the FBI? No. Then what was it? It was a virus. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, you were looking at pictures online using Google images (for all you Bing fans, I’m sorry but Google is much better). You were downloading pictures from Google and one of them happened to contain a virus and it was downloaded with one of the pictures. How do I know this is a virus? The answer is that I don’t. I didn’t give enough symptoms to diagnose this. To the pros at hacking and security, you may know that viruses are not the only threat. If you are new to the world of computers, you might not. The three types of malware that will try to harm your PC or your data in any way are Trojans, worms, and the most famous, viruses. These three are very different and all are terrible for you and your PC.

    Read More

  • Use of Technology in Police Departments

    1310 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are different types of computer crimes that many people become victims of every day. Computer crime is any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target ("Computer Crime: Chapter 2: What Are the Crimes? ", n.d.) - " Crimes such as data diddling, pump and dump, social engineering and spoofing are computer crimes. Even though these crimes are difficult due to privacy issues, the new technology has made investigations and prosecutions well organized and effective.

    Read More

  • The Ethics of Source Code Theft

    2869 Words  | 6 Pages

    Why do people pirate software? The obvious answer is: people want to use the software, but not pay for it. However, when we change the question slightly, to: “Why do people steal source code?” A variety of interesting answers can pop up. Possibly, the thief wants to modify the code, make copies of it, and proceed to sell it as his own creation -- for a profit. Or, perhaps the perpetrator is a raging open source advocate and he simply wants to examine the stolen code to improve his programming skills. As harmless as the latter may sound, it is still a clearly defined crime in virtually every hi-tech country in the world.1

    Read More

  • Book Review Of David Harley's Viruses Revealed?

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Cybercrime History: Computer Viruses And What Are They?

    1722 Words  | 4 Pages

    Why do people create computer viruses? Why they benefit from it? It is like asking why do people commit crimes? (Why People Create Computer). In the 20th century at the beginning of early computer viruses. They were for experiments, annoyance, and testing. They do not really harm computer systems or computers back then. In the 21st century computer viruses, are changing. They are becoming smarter and more destructive rarely without annoyance but they serve a purpose to cause some harm to a computer or computer systems (Benford).

    Read More

  • Computer Misuse Act 1990 Essay

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    The act was molded (8.1) to protect computer users from malicious attacks and information thieves which has (9)become a model for (10)several other cuntries, including Canada and the Republic of Ireland whom then with the (11)inspiration of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 created (12)their own information security laws to (13)deal with cybercrime. (13.1)Some of the offences under the Act are hacking, unautorised access to computer system and spreading malicious software with any purpose. (13.2)According to the Act it is an offence to acces to a

    Read More

  • Misuse Act 1990

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    Legislation Computer Misuse Act 1990 What it is? Comptuer misuse act is an act which was released in 1990 , this was designed to protect users against accts and thefts of information, this information can include addresses, names, credit card details etc… Theres many offences that come under this act which include hacking, unauthroised access to computer with the intent of spreaching malicion software such as viruses. This act also includes the modification of computer software and data which include passwords , settings and other changes which affect the normal operation of the system.

    Read More

  • Why Are Viruses Living

    346 Words  | 1 Pages

    First and foremost, a virus is defined as a particle composed of protein, nucleic acid, and sometimes, lipids, which can reproduce itself only by infecting live cells. The reason why viruses are questioned if they are living or nonliving is if they exhibit all the characteristics of life. One of the questionable characteristics regarding a virus is reproduction. Living organisms have the capability to reproduce on their own, sexually or assexually. However, viruses reproduce by infecting living cells, therefore being dependant on something. Another reason of why viruses are questioned as living or nonliving is their genetic code. Even though they have DNA and RNA inside a protein coat, they don't have a nucleus or ribosomes to copy their genes,

    Read More

  • Protecting Against Malware Essay

    2372 Words  | 5 Pages

    “ Prevention is better than cure ”, if computer users are aware of Malware attacks, they may prevent those attacks . So, in this research paper i am going to focus on Malware and Protecting Against Malware.

    Read More

  • Malware Essay

    1762 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Malware And Its Effects On Computer World

    1450 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Malware Essay

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Cybercrime Essay

    2700 Words  | 6 Pages

    Computer crime or Cyber Crime is defined as any type of crime that involves or regards a computer or computer network. Cyber Crime mainly means that the computer may be used as a tool in the commission of the crime or the computer may be the main target of the criminal’s crime. The rapid growth of technology and gadgets as well as the further de...

    Read More

More about Computer Virus Essay

Open Document