What kinds of viruses are out there?
A. In the past, virus experts classified pernicious code as viruses, virus carriers, Trojans, bombs, hoaxes and urban legends. But distinguishing viruses from other types of destructive programs is less useful than understanding how a virus can gain entry to your PC-and the rules of that game have changed radically. Not too long ago, a message on the Web declared that it’s a myth that viruses can hide inside a data file or in electronic mail, or in the text of a Web page. Perhaps at that time it was, but today, it’s possible to conceal destructive code in all three places. And you can’t trust the intentions of programmers involved in such untrustworthy activity: So-called benign “virus hoax” messages have been known to go so far astray that they’ve brought Internet servers to their knees. Q.
