The Genealogy Of Virus

Nowadays, there are many definitions for viruses, and a virus cant be called a virus anymore. Ever heard of worms? Trojans? Adware? Spyware? Malware? What are those things? Are they viruses Read on to find the answer.

Worms
Worms are set of programs that are created, as Ive explained earlier, to infect any system that is connected on a network. Some said worms originated from email attachments circulated on the internet. Whenever the email attachment is run, the worm will infect the windows, and will slowly crawl itself into the network that the system is connected.

Some of worms are known as the Mass-mailing worms. This mass mailing worms, once it has infected the windows, will integrate itself into the windows email client, i.e Microsoft Outlook, and will mail itself in the form of an attachment to all the contacts in the user address book

These worms are the most deadly threats in ICT (Information Communication Technology) during these days. This is because these worms know no boundary, and can infect millions of systems in a split second. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Trojans
The Trojan terms derived from the Greeks mythology, the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Have you ever watch the movie Troy? The one with Brad Pitt as the main actor. In the movie, or in the mythology, the Greeks were losing the war, so they devised a plan to trick the Trojans into their doom. The Greeks build a huge wooden horse as a gift for the Trojan as a token from their defeat. Hidden in the wooden horses, is a platoon of Greeks soldier waiting to attack troy when they bring the horses inside their fortified fortress. And the plan succeeded, the Greeks defeated Troy.

The same concept is applied for Trojan in ICT lingua. Trojan is a malicious program written with malicious intent, and disguise as a valid program to run on your windows. For example, you download a fun game from the internet, or a friend gave it to you. You run the game, and so far everything seems to be okay. But what you didnt know is, that when the game run, a malicious program that come with the game, run silently in the background.

And, if your pc is connected to the internet, the malicious program, which is the trojans, will connect to its creator, and will open a port which will enable the creator of the trojan to hack into your pc, and that is bad. The hacker will have a full control of your pc once he is connected through the trojan on your pc. He can do anything he want with your pc, and, that is very bad.

Spyware/Adware
Spyware and Adware cant be categorized in the same category as a virus. These programs are used for spying and displaying ads on your pc, as the name implies by corporations or companies involving in internet businesses. What are they spying? Well, mostly your data and habit on the internet. Why is it matter to them? It matter to them for their future marketing campaigns, that will bring them big money and profits.

Most of these spyware and adware wont do any damage to your pc, but some of them will hog your pc resources and some of these malware can bring down your pc to a crawl, rendering it useless due to resource hogging.

By now youve know a little bit about all these Viruses and Malicious software (Malware), now Im going to tell you how to protect your pc from these no good for nothing software.

ANTIVIRUS

Antivirus software is a must on any pc running Microsoft Windows as an Operating System. Some of the common names in the Antivirus Industry are Norton Antivirus, Mcafee Viruscan, PC Cilin, AVG and the list goes on. Some are a freeware, but most are commercial software, meaning you have to pay for their license.

So there are a lot of antivirus software, but which one is the best? The one you want to use to protect your PC. This debate has been going on and on, and in the end, there is no answer. For us at Edubase, the answer is fairly simple; the best antivirus software is the one that is regularly updated.

It really doesnt matter which Antivirus you use, as long as you keep their virus definition updated regularly, your pc will be safe from viruses.

FIREWALL

Firewall, simply speaking is software that monitors traffics between your pc and the internet, or network. The internet is a big network anyway. Nowadays, firewall software is a must, and not an option anymore.

Most of the soft firewall (firewall software) have the tendency to block or disallow any traffic or activity that is condemn to be malicious, for example a hack attempt by some digruntle hackers living thousand of miles away. Firewall can also hide your pc from any scan made by hackers; it will put all your port into stealth mode thus making your pc appear to be offline, or invisible to the outside world.

Some of the soft firewall also come with what is call a application policy , that is it can monitor programs and processes that is running on your pc, and give you the privileges either to allow or disallow the programs and processes, so unnecessary programs and processes can be block from running.

If your pc is connected to the Internet or Local Network most of the time, a software firewall is compulsory.
Preventative Measure

Below are some of the preventive measure you should take to protect your pc from viruses and other malicious software.

Do not open any email attachment from unknown, suspicious or untrustworthy source, even if it is a picture of the sexiest lady available today, hell even if its from your best friend. Better to confirm that they really sent the email, as if better to be safe than sorry.
Be very, very careful of file(s) you downloaded from the internet. Some of the website can run malicious code that can do harm to your pc even before you downloaded the files. Make sure to scan for viruses immediately after you save the file(s) to your pc.
Beware of file(s) from stranger. So you meet a new friend on IRC/Yahoo Messenger/MSN. He/She seems quite nice, you chat a while, and he/she make you laugh. And now he wants to send a picture of him/her to you. You accept the file, you run the file, and he/she is quite good looking. What you didnt know is, hidden in the file, is a trojans that is lurking in your background process just after you view the picture. So be very careful to accept files from stranger.
Scan for viruses every removable media that is plug in into your pc, i.e, a floppy disk, thumb drive, flash card/memory etc. Most of this removable media is writable, meaning that a virus or malicious software can write themselves on the removable media, and easily infected any system when theyre plugged in.

These are some of the info that can make you become more aware of what is happening in the virtual world, with the Internet connecting millions of pc every second, and most of them running product from Microsoft, which is well known for its security issue, precautions and prevention is necessary.


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About the Author:
A computer technician at work and at heart, currently running a website committed to solve bad experience with computer at http://www.badxp.com