What is a computer virus?

A virus is an independent program which reproduces itself. It may attach to other programs; it may create copies of itself (see companion viruses). It may attach itself to any executable code, including but not limited to boot sectors and/or partition sectors of hard and/or floppy disks. It may damage, corrupt or destroy data, or degrade system performance.

The threat of malicious software (computer virus) can easily be considered as the greatest threat to Internet security. Earlier, viruses were, more or less, the only form of malware. Nowadays, the threat has grown to include network-aware worms, trojans, DDoS agents, IRC Controlled bots, spyware, and so on. The infection vectors have also changed and grown and malicious agents now use techniques like email harvesting, browser exploits, operating system vulnerabilities, and P2P networks to spread.

Anti-Virus (AV) Software are develop to detect and remove these computer viruses. Though AV software is continually getting better, a small but very significant percentage of malware escapes the automated screening process and manages to enter and wreak havoc on networks. Unfortunately, this percentage is also growing everyday. It is essential for users to be able to determine if a program binary (executable software) is harmful by examining it manually and without relying on the automated scanning engines.

Updated On: 13.01.03