How Do You Tell The Difference Between A Virus, A Worm And A Trojan?
Viruses, Worms & Trojans, Oh My! Once connected to the internet, your computer becomes a potential target of the things that go bump in your hard drive. This article will help you determine whether your computer’s recent poor behavior is the result of a virus, a worm or a Trojan. How do you diagnose whether your computer issue is a virus, a worm or a Trojan? These three forms of malware–software that hurts your computer–differ in the ways they infect you computer, what they can do once triggered and in how they spread. THE VIRUS: At heart, a virus is just a computer program. Within its repertoire of mischief, it can slow your computer’s performance, cause crashes or display unwanted images and popup ads. A virus attaches itself to another program, usually an executable file–i.e. a file that has to be run (in contrast to a file that just contains data). The virus is not triggered until you run the executable file. Common file extension names for executable files include .bat, .com an
