Is Your PC Safe From Computer Viruses?

Virus in the biological world around us is often related to damage and destruction. Virus in computing technology is a program that has the same behavior pattern as that of a biological virus.

These programs are designed to destroy or hamper some function of the computer. By doing this they either destroy information or slow down processing capabilities of the computer system. In recent years they have also had a destructive presence on computer networks and on the internet.

Many people do not understand what is a computer virus? In computing terminology it is a self replicating/self producing automated program. This program spreads by inserting itself into executable code or documents that are present on the computer system. This process of insertion of a virus is called infection. The file into which the code is inserted is called an infected file. Each file has an extension; document files have 'doc' as an extension. The files that are infected the most are executable files which have extensions 'exe' and 'com'. Presently any file in which there is some programming capability is infected. There is a wide list of files that can be infected. A biological virus can be contracted only when you come into contact with it similarly a computer virus is spread if your computer gets into contact with any infected file.

By now you might know; when is a computer subject to infection by a virus. But are still curious about the various other terms like Trojans, worms and malware(malicious software). Malware is a more broad term. If you still are confused as to what is computer virus just remember computer virus can only affect software and cannot damage hardware.That's why I do not use my PC too often. With a best laptop in my hand, i can easily install any software wherever I want to.

Purpose of a Computer Virus

You may be wondering why people create computer viruses and where computer viruses come from do. The virus writers come from various sections of society and each has a different motivation factor:

Financial gain(employed by spammers and organized crime)
Impress peers (mostly teen hacker)
Ideological factors as freedom of knowledge or information
Technical challenge and scoring a point (I am better than the team that put your software together)
Political reasons ( a means to prove a political ideology and get focus of media)
Tools to do something ( schoolboy creator but this is very miniscule)
Some motives may be plain and simple revenge, cyber espionage and commercial sabotage.

Continue to : What are Computer Viruses and How do they Spread

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