Virus Essay

1. What is a Virus?

A computer virus is a program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the user knowing. Some viruses are made to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or reformatting the hard disk. Others are not designed to do any damage, but replicate themselves and perhaps make their presence known by displaying text, video, or audio messages. Even these benign viruses can create problems for the computer. They usually take up computer memory used by other programs. As a result, they often cause crazy behavior and can result in system crashes. Also many viruses are bug-ridden, and these bugs may lead to system crashes and data loss.

2. What is Anti-Virus Software?

Antivirus software is a computer program that trys to identify, stop and remove computer viruses and other malicious software like trojan horses.

Antivirus software usually uses two different techniques to accomplish this:

• Scanning files to look for viruses matching definitions in the virus dictionary

• Identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might show infection. Such analysis may include data captures, port monitoring and other methods.

3. Name 3 viruses and explain what they do

Trojan horse is a program that unlike a virus, contains or installs a malicious program (sometimes called the payload or 'trojan') while disguising itself as being something else. Trojan horses may appear to be useful or interesting programs to an unsuspecting user, but are harmful when executed.

Computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other computers in the network and it may do so without any