Home  News Articles News Articles Viruses, Trojans and Worms: General Classification
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Viruses, Trojans and Worms: General Classification |
Everyone is aware of possible theats associated with being exposed online: numerous viruses, trojans, worms await any inexperienced user to attack his or her computer, files and personal security. Not all of us realize the difference between a virus and trojan, which leads to some misunderstanding of the possible dangers caused by harmful applications.
"Malware" is a generic term for all the programs that do harm to you and your computer. For a program to be classified, a program must meet two criteria: it must be able to incorporate into another executable file and be able to execute itself from an infected program. Like a normal living virus, a computer virus needs a "carrier", a host file, to get itself to another location, and it needs to multiply itself to survive.
Viruses are capable of destroying your personal data, erase everything from your hard drive, damage all archives and install packages, they may also harm your hardware. However, viruses may harm your computer only after executing the infected file by a user. There exists another form of destruction that acts more treacherosly.
A computer worm need not have a host program to multiply itself. A worm enters a computer through a weakness in the computer system and propagates itself using network bugs. After "creeping" into a system, a worm releases a document containing the "worm" macro and sends its own copies to other computers through network weaknesses, thus acting completely on its own.
Trojans can be classified as an intermediate class of destructive software in the general classification. They are often used in combination with each other to produce a greater harmful effect. In most cases they also require user's intervention in order to be executed, but they exploit "human's factor" in many cases. Trojans are believed to be worse than viruses as trojans steal personal information like credit card numbers, passwords, and other confidential data.
You might be wondering what you can do to protect your computer from malware infection? There are a number of preventative measures that you can take. You can buy and update anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The first one can effectively defend a computer system from a virus or a worm, the latter is good at stopping trojans destroying your system or stealing your passwords. One of the most important requirements for such software is that they should contain real-time scanning feature in order for them to monitor all incoming and outgoing data (files, mails, packets). A firewall may also turn out useful as it forbids unauthorized access to your computer. Visit our site to keep in touch with the latest tips how to protect your system.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 May 2008 )
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