Taking a Look at Computer Viruses

648 Words2 Pages

Computer viruses are a major problem for computer users worldwide. They are programs that have the ability to reproduce and infect you system. In addition to being able to reproduce, viruses may be designed to do different destructive actions so a virus can destroy programs and data right away or can stay dormant for some time and do its damage in a certain time therefore Learning about viruses can help you to keep your system free from viruses. Computer Viruses are becoming more and more sophisticated and are transferred between computer systems using various methods. While email has been the primary method for the spread of these recent computer viruses, it is not the only method. A computer virus can also enter a network by CD, floppy disk, internet download, file sharing programs or by remote users connected to a network with an infected system. Once a computer virus gets into a network it can spread from computer to computer easily. After viruses infect your system, they may wait for a signal before performing damaging the system: time trigger actions and logic actions. Time actions are signals activated by a specific time or date. Logic actions are activated when specific functions are performed. Most computer viruses show three basic characteristics: a replication process, an activation process, and an objective. The replication mechanism searches for other programs to damage, if it finds any, it inserts the hidden instruction in the program then it modifies the execution sequence of the program. The activation mechanism checks for the occurrence of some event. When the event occurs, the computer virus executes its objective. Computer viruses have impacted a significant number of computers over the past few years. There ar... ... middle of paper ... ...a firewall to protect your system network, so that viruses that spread through email are blocked from entering the network. 4. All emails should be first filtered and scanned so to avoid surprise attack, and emails with certain file attachment such as .EXE, .COM and .SCR should always be prevented from entering the network or the system. 5. All users how work in a company or at home should be educated and have to have clear understanding how to avoid email viruses that are sent from unknown source ,therefore caution should be made when opening attachments. 6. Always scan internet downloads; although the files may seem clean you must always take percussions so that you can avoid viruses from entering your system easily. And this scanning should be performed in somewhere in the network where the virus have no chance to spread through the network.

Open Document