What is a computer virus?

• A computer virus is a program that alters the way a computer works, without the knowledge of the user. A virus will reproduce itself and will spread to other computers via email. Viruses can be destructive if they manage to infect a computer. More and more we are noting the collaboration between virus writers and spammers.

• Viruses are a general umbrella term covering other invasive computer programs such as worms and trojans. A worm is a piece of software that exploits security flaws in order to create copies of itself. A copy of the worm will scan the network for any other machine that has a specific security flaw. It replicates itself to the new machine using the security flaw, and then begins scanning and replicating a new.

• Worms are programs that replicate themselves from system to system without the use of a host file. This is in contrast to viruses, which requires the spreading of an infected host file. Although worms generally exist inside of other files, often Word or Excel documents, there is a difference between how worms and viruses use the host file. Usually the worm will release a document that already has the "worm" macro inside the document. The entire document will travel from computer to computer, so the entire document should be considered the worm. Mydoom or ILOVEYOU are two examples of worms.

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