Viruses are not biological entities, but in fact, they are just computer programs. However, they do have certain similarities. Firstly, they both rely on a host to survive and duplicate while attaching to them. We usually consider them as small programs invading and destroying the information of the host computers. Here, the hosts are the infected programs or files. While many have the misconception that viruses may be accidental bugs, but in the fact some programmers purposely write them. On the other hand, not every virus is intentionally evil. Nevertheless, in the past ten years, intentionally or non intentionally destructive viruses have cause a large amount of damages, mostly due to loss of time, money, and resources in erasing them (Kaspersky 2001, 1.3) Kaspersky lab.
To be a bit more precise, we define a computer virus as a self-replicating program that can infect other programs by modifying them or their surrounding such that a call to an infected program implies a call to a functionally similar copy of the virus.
In fact, there are literally thousands of viruses that can get on your system. They can come from anywhere, shut down your system, and destroy your data. The symptoms of an infected system include:
· Unusual items appearing on the display, including graphics, odd messages, or system error messages.
· Corrupted or inaccessible program files, hard disks, or diskettes.
· Programs taking longer to start up, running more slowly than usual, or not running at all.
· Unexplained decreases in the amount of available system memory.
Beware of any “abnormal” symptoms on your computer.
All these might indicate your machine is another victim under the spell of viruses. Yet, but bear in mind that some “troubles” are just signs showing you that there are too many programs being executable at the same time!!
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