What is a Computer Virus in plain English
One of my readers asked me to write a post about viruses in plain English so that the normal computer user can understand what they are and how they work. While thinking about it I decided that it might be a good idea and split the subject up into a couple posts. In this post we will go back in time a bit and have a quick look at the virus in its simpler form.
What is a virus? When I started out in computers this was a real easy answer. A virus was a program that made copies of itself on computers without the owner knowing. Sometimes these viruses had what was called a payload. This payload is a part of the program that is run when either a date or any number of other conditions are reached. In most cases this payload causes damage to the information stored on your pc. Some viruses will delete all the information on your computer while others just scramble the contents of file so that you are unable to open them.
But even during this simple time of computing there where to main types of viruses. The main virus would hide itself in the executable files on a computer. Then when someone started the program they also loaded the virus. The virus would then be able to spend its time copying itself to other executable files in the hope that one day you would make a copy of your favourite program and copy it to another computer. As soon as you started the program on the unaffected pc the virus would be loaded and able to infect the new computer.
Then came the dreaded boot sector virus, every device that you connect to your computer than allows you to copy files to it has a boot sector. This boot sector is a special place on all disks that allows your computer to start windows. So this little virus is able to start itself up every time you run your computer. When you put a floppy disk into the machine it would copy itself onto the disk ready for when the disk was used in another computer.
Time and computers have moved on from these simple days and as computer experts have tried to make the computer less venerable to viruses the people who develop them have made them smarter. Today we don’t just have a virus but we have worms, Trojans, email viruses, malware and many more. But even with all this complexity all these programs do one simple task. They make copies of themselves.
Join me in my next post where we will have a closer look at some of the new virus we have to deal with today. We will also have a look at what software you can use to help avoid these little programs of doom.
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