A computer virus is a malicious computer program that, when executed by an unsuspecting human, performs tasks that primarily include replicating itself and in some cases deploying a payload.
A decade or so ago, viruses were pretty simple. They got into a system and infected a file or two. It was a basic as ordering coffee when coffee was easy to order. “One coffee pleaseblack.”
Today, the catalog of viruses you have to defend yourself against is frighteningly complex. In fact, it’s become as complex as, well, ordering coffee.
“Looks like you’ve been infected by a dropper that’s put a Trojan on your system, which deployed a multi-partite that opened a backdoor and also infected the master boot record.”
Sounds like an order at Starbucks, don’t you think?
These days a discussion about a virus can actually occur without using the word virus because sometimes viruses are worms or Trojan horses, which are virus-like nasties that act a little different than their infectious cousins.
Why are they called computer viruses? Well, because they have similar characteristics to biological viruses that infect humansin at least one way. The computer variety jumps from computer to computer much like a cold virus jumps from your kids to you and from you to your spouse.
Don’t let all this frighten you, though. It’s not that hard to figure out and defending your computer against viruses is pretty straightforward. Still, if the idea makes you queasy, skip ahead to the part of the chapter about how to easily protect yourself from viruses. But I hope you stick around because the more you know, the geekier you will be. Okay, not really. But understanding them makes them much less scary.
Viruses were one of the first real security threats people had to deal with when personal computers started appearing in homes a couple of decades ago. The first computer viruses were written in the 1980s; however, they really didn’t become a big threat until the late 1990s when everyone who owned a personal computer started connecting to the Internet.
Before then viruses spread via floppy disks or CDs. They would ride on the back of files stored on a disk or in the boot area of the floppy and replicate when the disk was inserted into the computer.
The Internet’s popularity has also become the chief reason that security on personal computers has become such a hot topic. A Net connection is the off-ramp from the Internet into your computer for all data. And guess what? For viruses it’s an express lane.
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Computer Viruses:-
The world of computers and information technology is going through an era of an electronic terrorism, in the form of the computer virus. It is a problem that is potentially so dangerous that it threatens the proper functioning of the virus system in today’s information age.
The virus whether biological or electronic is an information disorder. Biological viruses are tiny genetic codes DNA or RNA that take over the machinery of a living cell and are capable of marking thousand of replicas of the original virus. Like its biological counterpart, a computer virus carries in it an instructional code that makes copies of itself.
Computer viruses are computer programs which are a collection of coded instructions. The basic difference between a normal program and virus is that viruses are self replicating; they have the capacity of executing themselves without being asked for. The ‘Computer virus’ is a very broad term in itself and includes not only viruses, but also worms and Trojans.
Classification of Computer viruses:-
Viruses are classified on the basic of their mode of existence and there are three categories of viruses.
1. BOOT Infector:-
2. SYSTEM Infector:
3. GENERAL EXECUTABLE PROGRAM Infectors:-
BOOT Infectors:-
As the name suggests, they are characterized by the fact that they are physically reside in the boot sector [0] sector of the disk. A system infected by such a virus will have the virus residing in a particular area of the disk rather then in a program file. These viruses get loaded soon after the Power Of Self Test and control the system and remains in control at all times. They some times have the capacity to trap soft booting (CTRL ALT DEL) and remain in control even if the system is booted from a non infected floppy, thereby contaminating the clean floppy.
SYSTEM Infectors:-
The second category of virus deals with components of the system itself. All machines without execution require an operating system in order to create an environment in which the operator works. In MS-DOS, COMMAND.COM contains all the internal commands. If no such command file exists, commands such as COPY, DIR etc. are not loaded into the memory when the machine is booted. The system infectors attach themselves to a file such as COMMAND.COM or other memory resident files and manipulate these files.
GENERAL EXECUTABLE PROGRAM Infectors:-
From the infection point of view, these are most dangerous and devastating of the three classes of viruses. They attach themselves to program files and can spread to almost any executable program in any system. These viruses change the original program instructions into a “jump” to its own code and follow that code with a return to the original program. As a result, whenever the program is executed, the virus gets loaded and executed first and then allows the original program to process. It remains memory resident and infects each and every program that is loaded for execution.
Types of Viruses:-
Worms:-
A worm is software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate, or affect other programs. A copy of the worm passes through the network to another machine that has a specific security hole. It then copies itself to the new machine, and then starts replicating from there.
Macros:-
Macro viruses’ use commands-called macros-embedded in the other software applications to infect and spread to other files used by that software. For example, Microsoft Word and Excel have macros, and macro viruses can spread by exploiting these commands.
Boot Sector viruses:-
Boot sector viruses are older types of virus and are not so common today. They used to infect computers startup programs, so that the virus would become active as soon as the computer started up.
Trojan Horses:-
Trojan Horses are programs that claim to perform a particular function but which in fact do something different. For example, they could infect your computer with a virus or erase your files.
Backdoor Trojans:-
Backdoor Trojans are programs that allow other computer users to remotely control your computer via a local area network or the internet.
Resident Viruses:-
These types of virus hides permanently in the RAM memory. From here it can control and intercept all of the operations carried out by the system corrupting files and programs that are opened, closed, copied etc.
Direct Action Viruses:-
When a specific condition is met (such as the execution of the virus) these virus will go into action and infect files in the directory or folder that it in and others as well.
Overwrite Viruses:-
These types of viruses are characterized by the fact that it deletes the information contained in the files that it infects, rendering them particularly or totally useless once they have been infected.
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