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Virus, Trojans, and Worms
a virus, Trojan or worm is a small
program written to cause harm to one or more computers or networks. A
Virus, Worm or Trojan can also be designed to retrieve information from
your computer to be delivered to an attacker for future use. For example
credit card information, passwords, and security access codes to name a
few.
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Virus are computer programs
with the sole purpose of destroying data on our computers. The virus may
only destroy unimportant files, or it may decide to erase all of your
document files. A virus can cause an infected computer to do funny
things on certain dates, as well as issue serious commands such as
erasing our Registry file, thus disabling the operation and booting up
of our computers.
Viruses are spread through executable files we either get from
friends, download off the net, or install through a floppy disk. A virus
will often come disguised under the cloak of a Trojan, which is the
carrier for the virus.
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Trojans, aka Trojan
horse refers to a program that appears as something you may
think is safe, but hidden inside is usually something harmful, probably a
worm or a virus. The lure of Trojans is that you may download a game or a
picture, thinking it's harmless, but once you execute this file (run it),
the worm or virus gets to work. Sometimes they will only do things to annoy
you, but usually a worm or virus will cause damage to your system.
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Worms are programs which reproduce by
copying themselves over and over, system to system, using up resources and
sometimes slowing down the systems. They are self contained and use the
networks to spread, in much the same way viruses use files to spread.
Worms generally come through our email client, but people can also get
infected if they accept a Trojan File which has as the payload a worm. If
you receive a worm program through your email, and then execute it, this
program sends the worm file out to all that are listed in your email address
book. If you work in a major corporation, this could means hundreds of
people, and so the multiplying continues. |
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