Virus - The Ace Menace

A virus is nothing but a computer program that is designed to replicate itself by copying itself to other programs in the computer. The virus then spreads throughout a computer system or network without the knowledge or authorization of the user. Every program that gets infected may also act as a virus and thus the infection grows. These are pieces of software that take undue credit of real programs.

Some viruses are mild which causes unwanted messages to appear on the screen. But some other viruses are destructive that can cause severe damage resulting in lost or corrupted files or can wipe out the computer's memory that necessitates the reinstallation of operating systems and other applications.

Some of the viruses that cause serious threats to the computer and Internet are:

Trojan Horses: These are simply computer programs which are labeled as one and are intended to do something harmful. For example, they could come in the label of various games and once the program is run it performs its malicious acts.

Worms: Unlike virus, worms are harmful programs that hunts for a new system to replicate, rather than a program in the same system. Hence a worm replicates from system to system or a network. A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks .

Undoubtedly all these are malicious software programs that are threats to the entire computer security systems and are invoked without the user’s consent. They are collectively called Malware.

Spyware and Adware are yet another form of such malicious programs which usually affects the system via the internet.

Impact of virus attack

We have seen the various agents that cause intense threat to the cyber world, known as computer viruses. They are simple software programs that cause damage to the data or information in your PC.

The impact of virus attack can vary from mild to severe attacks. Similar to biological virus, computer virus lies dormant for a while before the attack. The mild kind of attacks by the virus may just force you to continuously press some keyboard key at regular intervals to enable you to work on the computer. In contrast, the severe kind of attack may end up even formatting your entire hard disk, reinstalling your operating system where you may not be able to even retrieve any of your existing files. Viruses cause damage worth billions each year both in terms of data, man hours and money that companies waste while the data is being recovered by professionals.

Now to say, who creates this virus?

Since viruses are nothing but software programs written with detrimental intentions, it is quite evident that they are written by clever software programmers. Some of them get out of the legal ways to use the skill in programming. They try to impress others proving how creative they are. Some finds pleasure causing massive damage to other data.

Even before Internet gained its popularity and data used to be transferred using removable storage devices, virus used to spread commuting over these devices. Ever since Internet has conquered the scenario, as soon as the computers get connected to the Net, the viruses probes the cyberspace hunting for potential victims. Most viruses enter computer systems through Internet downloads,emails with infected attachments with or without the user’s consent.

How can you protect your computer?

Safeguarding your computer is not an easy task. To destroy or prevent the viruses from attacking your computer, there are another set of antidote software programs created known as anti virus.

Antivirus residing on your computer acts as a shield, keeping track of all files entering your machine. The anti-virus has a vast built-in library of all known viruses. The antivirus installed scans the systems periodically to check for any virus attack. It also scans every incoming file, downloads and emails. As soon as it comes across a known virus, it warns the user to take necessary actions. Updating the antivirus periodically or atleast the virus list, f-rom the vendor site is also necessary for protecting your system from the new viruses.

Here are the list of viruses which had affected the computer.

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