What is a Virus?
A computer Virus is a program
that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and
with the intent of doing some damage to your system. The
effect of computer viruses varies from little damage so that
you are unaware your computer has been infected, to wiping
out the entire contents of disks. Viruses come in many
different forms, are manmade and most are intentionally
designed to replicate themselves. When the virus program
runs it makes a copy of itself and adds itself to another
computer program. Each time the infected program is run the
virus is also run. If your system is infected, you can
easily spread the virus to others through shared disks and
email attachments.
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What is a Worm?
A computer WORM is a self-contained
program (or set of programs), and is able to spread functional copies of
itself or segments to other computer systems usually via network
connections. Host computer worms are entirely contained in the computer
they run on and use network connections to copy themselves to other
computers. Network computer worms consist of multiple parts called
'segments', each running on different machines, possibly performing
different actions, and using the network for several communication
purposes. Propagating a segment from one machine to another is only one
of those purposes.
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What is a Trojan?
A Trojan is malware that performs
unexpected or unauthorized, often malicious, actions. The main
difference between a Trojan and a virus is the inability to replicate.
Trojans cause damage, unexpected system behavior, and compromise the
security of systems, but do not replicate. A Trojan, coined from Greek
mythology's Trojan horse, typically comes in good packaging but has some
hidden malicious intent within its code. When a Trojan is executed users
will likely experience unwanted system problems in operation, and
sometimes loss of valuable data.
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