What is a computer virus?
A computer virus is a malicious computer program that infects the computer memory or hard disk. Some are comical and will simply change the display on your monitor while most are designed to do damage to the data on the computer. Boot sector viruses are especially damaging since they rewrite the information needed to start up and access your computer’s hard disk. Trojan horses are destructive programs disguised as something harmless like a game. Worms are programs written to replicate themselves until the computer’s memory or hard drive is completely used up at which time the computer crashes and becomes inoperable. A good place to learn more about computer viruses is CERT’s web site (http://www.cert.
A program or code that replicates itself and infects another program, boot sector, partition sector, or document that supports macros, by inserting itself or attaching itself to that medium. Computer viruses are often attached to other software or documents you might receive. When you run the virus’s software or the file the virus has infected, the virus can infect your computer’s software. Many computer viruses are malicious – they can erase your files or lock up whole computer systems. Other computer viruses are more benign – they don’t do any direct damage other than by spreading themselves locally or throughout the Internet.
A computer virus is program, (generally a small string of code) that is designed to replicate, and or “infect” other programs by modifying them or the environment in which they operate. Calls to these progams in turn cause the virus to evolve. Creation of these viruses and other problems continues to grow at an exponential rate and will only continue to get worse.
Viruses are programs that can easily effect your computer in many ways from simply being annoying to being highly destructive. They (1) have the ability to reproduce infecting other files or programs and (2) when run can carry out a range of annoying or damaging actions in your computer and across networks (including the Internet).
