Hardware: Computer Virus Background

Whenever download a free program to install, we always faced a new challenge. That new challenge is we also have downloaded a virus to our computer. We may have to spend couple of days trying to get rid of virus. With that, what is computer virus? How is it so lethal?

What is Computer Virus?

• A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code.
• If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be “infected” with a computer virus, a metaphor derived from biological viruses.
• In 1983, while a student at the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering, he wrote a program for a parasitic application that seized control of computer operations, one of the first computer viruses, in Leonard Adleman’s class.
• He wrote a short program, as an experiment, that could “infect” computers, make copies of itself, and spread from one machine to another

Modern Virus

• In modern virus, they will be hide and mask themselves as Windows, software components, they damage Windows, making hapless computer user to go crazy with frustration.
• Motives for creating viruses can include seeking profit (e.g., with ransomware), desire to send a political message, personal amusement, to demonstrate that a vulnerability exists in software

One Step Ahead

• The difficult part of virus removal is that the vrius is always one step ahead of the tools to remove them. Since some geeks continually creates them, the tools to remvoe them are a step behind the virus creation.
• Victim detecting and identifying a virus precede creating updates to virus-removal tools/

How virus infect your computer?

• Originally, computer viruses spread by inflected floppy disk. A inflected floppy disj was most commonly a bootable floppy disk that loaded the computers disk operating system (DOS).
• A virus added itself to a legitimate program and then loaded when the computer opened the legitimate program’s executable (EXE or COM) file.
• Once n the memory, the virus wrote copies of itself on every floppy placed in computer’s floppy disk drives.
• In 90s, virus evolved into scripts that ran using Microsoft Office programs such as Word, or Excel, Office )DOC and XLS) files carried these viruses from computer to computer.
• Emails block transfer of executable files. Scanning is put in place to prevent virus traveling through internet emails.

Inflection from websites.

• All websites and website advertisement s run programs in your computer.
• These programs produce visual effects and videos in Web pages.
• Email messages carrying links to websites may not be virus infected.
• But the web sites are virally inflected and attack your computer with virus.
• In recent 2013 studies, reveal that the greatest risk of virus infection comes from search engines, retail pages and social media sites.

Hope you enjoy our article on computer virus. We will learn more on them and prevent them to infecting our computer.

Take care and enjoy your weekends.