Computer Viruses and Internet Security

As mentioned above viruses can attack your network or even your home computer. When a virus hits it can do a lot of damage. In order for you to deal with viruses, it would be good to know what they are and how they work. This way you can see how they relate to Internet security.  There are four types of infections you can get on your PC. These are:

 

·        Viruses – Viruses are small pieces of software that can be included in other programs or be embedded in email. Every time you run the software, you run the virus. At this time, anything could happen, depending on what the virus was created to do.

·        Email Viruses – An email virus is about the same as a regular virus with the exception it is attached to an email message. When an unsuspecting person opens his email, the virus executes itself, possibly attacking the address book so as to send itself out to many people at once.  

·        Worms: A worm is like a virus in that it is a small piece of software that once it gets into a computer it can cause some damage. It is different from viruses in that a virus attaches itself to a program and spread that way. A worm finds a security hole in a network, scans it until it finds another machine listening in, and then copies itself to that machine. It continues replicating itself in this manner until the whole network is saturated.

·        Trojan Horses: A Trojan horse is unlike a virus or worm for it is simply a computer program that claims to do one thing until you run it. At that time it causes a lot of damage. Plus, they do not replicate like worms do.