computer virus
computer virus

Anyone that has ever possessed a computer has heard about or experienced a computer virus. This is a very familiar name in the Internet world. Along with it is a very scary name it is also very harmful to your computer and other electronic gadgets. That is, if it enters the system once, it can also degrade it and destroy your data. According to livescience.com  2018 was reported to be the year in which most of the spam emails containing computer virus and malware were either sent or received. Gone are the days when new computer users were told concerning the rarity of viruses and there wasn't any need to worry. Countless news reports have validated the worry over computer virus, but exactly what's a computer virus? and How many types of computer virus are there?

WHAT IS COMPUTER VIRUS?

computer virus
computer virus

Just like our Virus (eg HIV, Rabies, etc) are harmful to any living beings as they spread many diseases in their body, in the same way, computer virus also brings many troubles. Basically, a computer virus is an application program designed to destroy or steal information. These viruses are most frequently sent via e-mail attachments, software downloads, and some forms of advanced web scripting. to the Computer System. A computer virus can degrade the system without the knowledge of the user in such a way that it cannot be easily fixed. The Computer requires to run a lot of software programs, without any of this program the computer cannot work. These programs are designed to make the computer work properly but some computer program is designed to distort the working of the computer. Various viruses cause several types of injury to your computer, Trojan horses ruin data, bombs explode through the human body, and rats replicate themselves, destroying or corrupt data as they go. These viruses could be combined into more deadly types, but they can normally be recognized by their location on your pc. Boot Sector Virus - Most early kinds of the virus have been boot sector because it requires that a removable device such as that a floppy disc or CD to attain your machine. These viruses activate each time you reboot your own system and will infect any other floppies added afterward. 

WHAT IS A PROGRAM?

Have you ever tried to find a place using Google Maps? Google maps provide you with the complete instruction (for turn left after 40 m then head on to the expressway) to make you reach your destination. Similarly, the instructions which we give to the computer to perform a certain task are called programs. Not every program is a computer virus but every virus is a computer program.

HISTORY OF COMPUTER 

Robert Thomas was the first engineer to work in BBN Technologies who first developed computer virus in 1971. This first virus was named "Creeper" virus, and it was an experimental program that Thomas used to infect ARPANET's mainframes. After infecting the system, it used to display the following message on the screen, "I'm the creeper: Catch me if you can." The original computer virus which went wild and was tracked in the history of all the computer viruses was "Elk Cloner." Elk Cloner first infected Apple II operating systems, through floppy disks. This virus was developed by Richard Skrenta in 1982, who was a teenager at that time. The first person to name these Malicious Programs as "Computer Virus" was Fred Cohen, who named it in 1983. These names came out in his research papers named "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments" where he wrote complete information about these malicious programs and what is computer virus? how does it work? and its types.

WHAT CAN COMPUTER VIRUSES DO?

A computer virus can corrupt or delete data on the computer. They can completely destroy the data stored in your hard disk permanently. Computer viruses also go into other computers through e-mail attachments and spoil their computers. The virus makes your computer's speed very slow. The performance of the computer also degrades.

WHAT IS MALWARE? 

Malware's full name is malicious software. This is also a software program that harms computers. Malicious software means bad software that comes into your system, it can completely degrade your system. 

WHERE DOES MALWARE COME FROM? 


Malware can come from many places in our system, the most common source is the internet. We get some valuable information every day on the internet. If we have gone to any malicious site to obtain that information or downloaded pirated software, games and movies from anywhere, then malware comes too can come to our computer. This how malware came to our computer online, now we know how offline malware comes in our computer. We all use Pendrive, CDs, DVDs on our computers. When we connect to Pendrive and CDs from other places to get data, malware comes to our computer from all these, destroying our valuable data.

TYPES OF MALWARE

There are three types of malware- Computer Virus, Worms and Trojan horse. These three are different, their work is also different. These three disrupt your computer in different ways. Let us know about these three and what they do.

WHAT IS IN A COMPUTER VIRUS?


A computer virus can corrupt files and software on your system. Suppose your system has an infected word document, it will delete the data on your document or corrupt that document so that you will not get any information from it. Or it may happen that this virus can completely corrupt your word processing software. In such a case, if you copy or share a corrupted file, this virus also is shared and it destroys the other system in the same way.

TYPES OF COMPUTER VIRUS

 A computer virus is a type of malware that can multiply itself automatically if it enters the computer's memory and can also change programs, applications. A computer is said to be infected when these malicious codes are automatically duplicated. Here we will be provided with complete information about the types of these computer viruses 

  1. Boot Sector Virus - This kind of virus infects the master boot record and it is very difficult to get rid of them. We often have to format the system to remove them. These are mainly spread by removable media. These Boot-record Infectors infect the executable code, which is found in the specific system areas of the disk. As the name suggests, they infect more in USB thumb drives and DOS boot sector. These boot viruses are not used nowadays because the current systems do not depend much on physical storage media for booting.
  2. Direct Action Virus - These are also called non-resident viruses, once it is installed, the computer remains hidden in memory. It remains attached to those specific types of files which they infect. These computer viruses do not infect the system's performance.
  3. Resident Virus - also known as "Direct action virus", resident viruses are also installed on the computer. Apart from this, identifying them is difficult to work. This virus implants itself in the memory of a computer. Basically, there is no need for an original virus program to infect any files or programs to infect. Even if you delete the original virus, a version of it is stored in memory and loads again. This happens when the computer OS loads some applications or functions. Since this is hidden in the system's RAM, it has often been undetected any antivirus or antimalware.
  4. Multipartite Virus - This type of virus can affect the system in multiple ways. These two infect both the boot sector and executable files simultaneously.
  5. Polymorphic Virus - Identifying these types of viruses is a very difficult thing for a traditional anti-virus program because these viruses change their signature patterns frequently whenever they replicate themselves. This type of virus is used by more cybercriminals. This is a type of malware type that can easily change or mutate its underlying code, and then and without changing any basic functions or features. It does not even detect by any anti-malware software as Whenever an anti-malware detects it, it modifies itself, which makes it very confusing for antivirus.
  6. Overwrite Virus - This type of virus deletes all the files that they infect. To remove these viruses from the system, the computer virus has to delete all infected files, which causes data loss. It is very difficult to stop their spreading as these virus spread through emails. This virus has been designed so that it can overwrite itself and destroy any file or application data. Once this attack starts, it seems to overwrite the code itself.
  7. Spacefiller Virus - They are also called "Cavity Viruses". This name has been given to it because it fills all the spaces in the code, so it does not cause the files to be damaged.
  8. File infectors Virus - Some of these has the extension such as .com or .exe files. Some have .sys, .ovl, .prg, and .mnu files. Just like when a particular program is loaded, the virus itself also gets loaded. 
  9. Macro viruses - As the name suggests, these macro viruses mainly target macro language commands, such as in some applications such as Microsoft Word. These macro viruses have been designed in such a way that they easily add their malicious code to genuine macro sequences.
  10. Rootkit Viruses - This rootkit virus is a type of malware type that secretly installs an illegal rootkit in the infected system. From this, it opens a door for attackers which give them full control over the system. This allows the attacker to easily modify or disable a program or function on the infected system. These rootkit virus can easily bypass the antivirus software. Rootkit scanner is needed to capture them.

WHAT IS WORM?

Worms are similar to viruses but they multiply themselves and try to spread more and more. Which means that if your system has worms, then they start to create many copies of different files, which makes the system slow. If we copy the same files and share it with another computer then worms will also go there and slow down that computer by making too many copies of files.

WHAT IS TROJAN HORSE 

Trojan Horse is a very dangerous malware. This malware hides your identity on your computer. Let's assume that you are using the internet and if you have visited any site, you will see an addition like "click here to win smartphone" and if you click on it, then trojan horse malware will come to your computer from the website. And you will not even report it and your system will completely get spoiled it. They are also available on the Internet as software which you will find are genuine, but in reality, it is a trojan that remains hidden inside the software. Once it comes to your computer,  your computer starts to slow down. Along with that, It will open a door from which other types of viruses and worms can come into your computer.

SIGNS OF COMPUTER VIRUS INFECTION IN THE SYSTEM

How to know if your system is infected with a Virus or not. That's why I'm going to talk about some of the warning signs below, which is very important for all the computer users -

• Having a slow system performance
• Repeated pop-ups in screen
• Programmers' own running
• Files being automatically multiplying/duplicating
• Install new files and programs automatically in the computer
• Automatically delete and corrupt files, folders or programs
• Strange sound coming from the hard drive

If your system shows such warnings then you should know that your system may be infected by viruses. So soon after downloading a good bit of antivirus software scan it.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR SYSTEM FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES AND WORM 

computer virus
computer virus
what should be done

1. Always install a good antivirus in your system and keep it updated from time to time.
2. Any email you do not know about its sender should not open it.
3. Do not download anything from Unauthorized Websites like MP3, Movies, Software, etc.
4. Get a good scan of all downloaded things. Because there is more chance of having a virus.
5. Removable media such as pen drive, use only after scanning the disks.
6. If you visit any website, then you should be aware that it is a popular and registered website and do not click on any such link, which will later cause you problems.

what should not be done

1. Never open an email attachment if you do not know about that sender.
2. Do not try to open any unsolicited executable files, documents, spreadsheets without scratching.
3. Do not download documents or executable software from untrusted websites.
4. Click on the ads you are tempted to click here and if you win the lottery then never click on such add-ons. Similar greeds come in e-mails too, so do not ever open that mail as it also has more chances of malware.

ALSO READ:- What Is Dark Web | How To Access Dark web
                           What Is Phishing | How To Prevent Yourself From Phishing

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