Hacker Highschool Security Awarness for teens:6.0 Introduction
“Malware” are programs or parts of programs that have a malicious ( “Mal” ) or unpleasant effect on your computer security. This covers many different terms that you may have heard before, such as “Virus”, “Worm” and “Trojan” and possibly a few that you haven't like “Rootkit”, “Logicbomb” and “Spyware”. This lesson will introduce, define and explain each of these subdivisions of malware, will give you examples, and will explain some of the countermeasures that can be put into place to restrict the problems caused by malware.
6.1 Viruses (Virii)
6.1.1 Introduction
Virus – this is the most common type of malware that people will be aware of. The reason that it is known as a virus, rather than anything else, is historical. The press ran the stories of the first computer virus at the same time as articles concerning the spread of AIDS. At the time, there were simple parallels that could be easily drawn between the two, propagation through interaction with a contaminated party, the reliance on a host and the ultimate “death” of anything infected. This resulted, and still does occasionally, in concerns that people could become “infected” with a computer virus.
6.1.2 Description
Viruses or virii are self-replicating pieces of software that, similar to a biological virus, attach themselves to another program, or, in the case of “macro viruses”, to another file. The virus is only run when the program or the file is run or opened. It is this which differentiates viruses from worms. If the program or file is not accessed in any way, then the virus will not run and will not copy itself further.
There are a number of types of viruses, although, significantly, the most common form today is the macro virus, and others, such as the boot sector virus are now only found “in captivity”.
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