COURSE: Enthical And Social Issues In Information System

Name: Perpetual Ifeanyi Onyia

Topic: Virus, Worms, & Trojan Horses

Virus, worms, & Trojan HorsesThey are all malicious program that can cause damage to

your computer. But there are differences among the three. One common mistake people make when the topic of a computer virus arises is to refer to a worm or trojan horses as a virus.

Creation Of Virus:

Few years ago, creating a virus required knowledge of a computer programming language. Today anyone with even a little programming knowledge can create a virus.

First Computer Virus:The creeper virus was first detected on

ARPANET, the forerunner of the internet, in the early 1970. Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN technologies in 1971.

Virusvirus is a program that can infect other program by

modifying it, virus attaches itself to a program or files enabling it to spread from one computer to another leaving infection as it travels. Virus is a malicious program that is a fragment of an executable program. When a system is infected the disk operating system can be temporarily controlled by the virus to infect the other files. Virus can be activated when the host program is activated to perform a specific task. People continue the spread of virus mostly unknowingly by sharing the infecting files or sending e-mail with viruses as attachment in the e-mail.

The Life Phase Of A Virus:Dormant PhasePropagatory PhaseTriggering PhaseExecution Phase

Types of virus

• Parasitic Virus• Memory-Resident Virus• Boost Sector Virus• Macro Virus

Parasitic VirusIt is the most common form of virus.Memory-Resident Virus: these virus stays in

the main memory and infect every program that execute.

Boost Sector Virus: it infects a master boot record and spread when a system is boosted from the disk containing virus.

Macro Virus: these is a form of virus that does not infect executable files or program.

WormWorms is a program or algorithm that

replicates itself over a computer network and usually perform malicious action. Network worms uses network connection to spread from system to system. once active within a system, it can behave as a computer virus or bacteria or could implant trojan horses or perform any number of destructive action.

Worms:

Trojan HorsesTrojan horses is a useful program or command

procedure containing hidden code that when invoked can perform some unwanted or harmful function. Trojan horses first glance will appear to be useful software but will actually do damage once installed or run on your computer. When a trojan horse is activated on your computer the results can vary.

Trojan Horses:

Ways To Prevent Viruses, Worms, & Trojan Horses On your ComputerKeep the operating system of your computer

updated.Have anti-virus softwareUse a firewall

Summary:When a virus or worms is activated, they are

trying to produce one or more copies of itself to be activated later on the same system or some other system.

Virus, worms and trojan horses are all malicious program.

Thanks