Two main ways how viruses spread are by network? and by [removable media]? (usually floppy disks). In early days of DOS, the latter way was dominant, as almost nobody was connected with the Internet and people exchanged lot of floppies. Nowadays, as many computers are connencted, and people use mostly read-only media (like CDROM?) and Internet for communication, the first way is dominant.
Removable media viruses were usually written in assembler. Most of network viruses are macroviruses? and are specific to single popular computer program. Recently the most widely spreaded viruses were [Outlook viruses]? that spreaded using bugs of [Microsoft Outlook]? and [Microsoft Outlook Express]? programs.
Much bandwidth has been wasted arguing about the difference between a computer virus and a Computer worm; the important thing about both is that they spread, and therefore can cause orders of magnitude more trouble than a direct attack or a typical non-spreading Trojan horse.
The term "computer virus" was first used in print by [Fred Cohen]? (currently on the Web at http://all.net/ and vicinity), in his 1985 PhD thesis. However, the first virus which escaped into the wild was "Elk Cloner", written in 1982 by [Rich Skrenta]?. See http://www.skrenta.com/ for details, including the source code.
Related topics: Computer Security, hacking
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)