Computer Viruses The dreaded computer virus. The thought of getting one of these strikes fear into the stoutest hearted of us. But why would anyone write one of these virus programs? As a person that has experienced having a virus several times in the past, I am starting to believe in capital punishment for these people, just kidding. Seriously though, these viruses can add billions of dollars in added costs to the economy to the products we use every day. The worst part of this is the virus protection we use doesn't always help. Computer viruses are so effective that the governments of the world are developing computer viruses as weapons. This is a great weapon for the smaller countries too, because it is relatively cheap and potentially destructive. Just think if an undetectable computer virus was introduced into the cell phone company computers, whoops there goes the communications. How many of us with our personal computers have spent hours and days trying to restore our computers to their previous status? Just think of trying to do the same thing at the phone company with their myriad of computers and computer equipment, no small task I would say. A computer virus is a piece of computer code that can replicate itself many times over or destroy computer code, it can also hold your computer data hostage. Holding computer data hostage is done with what is known as ransomware. You cannot get your data back without a code which will be sold to you for a price. Not all computer viruses are harmful, some just leave annoying messages on your screen, while others can wipe out your drives. Here are some virus types: BOOT SECTOR VIRUS - It effects the section of a disk that contains operating system file information. Each time you start your PC with an infected disk in your drive, the virus can spread. FILE INFECTOR VIRUS - Some file infector viruses infect executable files. The file infector virus can get control when the program is first executed. In most cases, the file infector virus will return control to the original program after it has completed its own execution. File infector viruses replace or attach themselves to files with certain extensions such as “.COM” and “.EXE”. Programs become infected when file infector viruses are executed with the virus in memory and operate without revealing their presence. Some attack on a certain date. MACRO VIRUSES - Macro viruses are programs written in the Macro language, which is provided with some software applications. To spread, Macro viruses exploit the capabilities of the Macro languages to transfer themselves from one infected file to another. First discovered in 1995, they infected documents created with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. This virus Infects documents, spreadsheets, and templates. COMPANION VIRUS - A companion virus is a virus that creates a new program with the same file name as an existing program, creates this in a different place or gain’s a different file type, so that typing the program's name on the command line causes the virus program to be executed instead of the original program. PARASITIC VIRUSES - A type of file that changes the contents of the target file while infecting it. The original contents of the file will be completely or at least partly unusable. POLYMORPHIC VIRUS - A virus which changes its telltale code segments so that it "looks" different from one infected file to another, making the polymorphic virus more difficult to find. It keeps moving to fool virus scanners. MULTIPARTITE - Multipartite viruses usually infect both boot records and files. Multipartite viruses spread pretty easily. Variations are polymorphic virus and stealth virus. Most difficult to detect and remove. STEALTH VIRUS - A stealth virus is a virus that actively seeks to conceal itself from discovery or defends itself against attempts to analyze or removes itself. The stealth virus temporarily hides itself so it can't be seen by virus scanners. Some people accuse the Anti-Virus companies of writing viruses and releasing them to further the sales of their products. I don't think they have to do that, there are plenty of viruses around to keep them profitable. The guess is about 10 to 15 new viruses per day. Use Anti-Virus software – Commercial software is the best and I prefer Bitdefender Total Security. Free software is not dependable.
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