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Types of Infection
When you listen to the news, you hear about many
different forms of electronic infection. The
most common are:
Viruses
- A virus is a small piece of software that
piggybacks on real programs. For example, a
virus might attach itself to a program such as a
spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet
program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has
the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other
programs) or wreak havoc.
E-mail viruses
- An e-mail virus moves around in
e-mail messages, and usually replicates
itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens
of people in the victim's e-mail address book.
Worms
- A worm is a small piece of software that uses
computer networks and security holes to
replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the
network for another machine that has a specific
security hole. It copies itself to the new
machine using the security hole, and then starts
replicating from there, as well.
Trojan horses
- A Trojan horse is simply a computer program.
The program claims to do one thing (it may claim
to be a game) but instead does damage when you
run it (it may erase your
hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to
replicate automatically. |
