Viruses :: essays research papers

virtually of us swap disks with friends and browse the Net looking for downloads. Rarely do we ever consider that we are also exchanging files with anyone and everyone who has ever handled them in the past. If that sounds equivalent a warning ab protrude cordial diseases, its right along the same lines. Computer viruses are every bit as harmful and destructive, and start out in a vast variety of types and strains. Computer viruses, pile kill up your hard drive and bring down your system. However, un akin social diseases, reckoner viruses are almost always curable, and the cures for new strains are normally a matter of days away, rather than months or years.A computer virus is a program designed to replicate and spread, generally with the dupe being oblivious to its existence. Computer viruses spread by attaching themselves to other programs much(prenominal) as word processors or spreadsheets, or to the boot sector of the disk. When an infect file is activated, or when the computer is started from an infected disk, the virus itself is also activated. some(prenominal) times a virus will lurk in a computers memory, waiting to infect the next program or disk that is activated. What makes viruses so dangerous is their ability to perform an event. While some events are spotless like displaying a message on a certain date, and others annoying, like slowing performance or altering the screen display, some viruses can be disastrous by damaging files, and destroying data.Most viruses are created out of curiosity. There are those out there who create them out of malice, solely far more of the creators are just meeting a challenge, to claver if they can do it or not. A common type of virus would be a trojan horse Horse, a destructive program mantled as a game, a utility, or an application. When run a Trojan Horse does something harmful to the computer system, while appearing to do something useful. A squirm is also a popular type of virus. A dirt ball is a program that spreads itself across computers, usually by spawning copies of itself in individually computers memory. A worm might duplicate itself in one computers memory so often that it causes the computer to crash. A worm is introduced secretly into a host system either for fun, or with the design to damage or destroy information. Now I will explicate some of the more major viruses, and how they function.