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Two main ways how viruses spread are by network? and by [removable media]? (usually floppy disks). In early days of personal computers, 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. |
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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. (As an example argument, it's unclear if "Elk Cloner", often called the first virus, was formally a virus or a worm, because it didn't attach itself to a "program", but to the OS.) Here "virus" will be used to refer to both viruses and worms. |
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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. |
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Two main ways how viruses spread are by network? and by [removable media]? (usually floppy disks). In early days of personal computers, few were connected via networks and people exchanged information and programs on floppies. Viruses therefore were designed to attach themselves to existing programs so that they might be copied and run on other computers. Nowadays, many computers are connencted via the Internet and other networks. Today's viruses, therefore, tend to use network communication (e.g. web servers and email) to spread. |
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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. (As an example argument, it's unclear if "Elk Cloner", often called the first virus, was formally a virus or a worm, because it didn't attach itself to a "program", but to the OS.) |
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Most viruses written today are macroviruses? and are specific to single popular computer program. The most endemic viruses in recent years have been e-mail viruses that spread by e-mailing themselves to the contacts stored in the user's e-mail program (e.g. [Microsoft Outlook]? or [Microsoft Outlook Express]?) under the guise of some innocuous attachment. |
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