Viruses and Worms

Do you know what makes your computer slow or make your computer malfunction, its because of the worms and viruses that attacks your computer without knowing.

WORMS

A worm or a virus is a self-replicating computer programs.Worms specifically uses a network to send copies of itself to other network and it may do without any user intervention or knowledge of the owner and it does not need to attach itself to any exixting program also it is almost always cause at least some harm to the network if only by consuming its bandwidth, viruses on the other hand is commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability.

VIRUS

A true Virus can only spread from one computer to another makes its host taken to the target computer, for instance because a user sent it over a network or the internet, or carried it on a removable medium sush as floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive.Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer. This two is partially the same because they have the same agenda for infecting a computer it only differs on the way they spread or what is their target to destroy.

Worms also had a good intent in the beginning with the very first research into worms at Xerox PARC there have been attempts to create useful worms. The Nachi family of worms, for example, tried to download and install patches from Microsoft’s website to fix vulnerabilities in the host system – by exploiting those same vulnerabilities. In practice, although this may have made these systems more secure, it generated considerable network traffic, rebooted the machine in the course of patching it, and did its work without the consent of the computer’s owner or user.

Some worms, such as XSS worms, have been written for research to determine the factors of how worms spread, such as social activity and change in user behavior, while other worms are little more than a prank, such as one that sends the popular image macro of an owl with the phrase “O RLY?” to a print queue in the infected computer.

Most security experts regard all worms as malware, whatever their payload or their writers’ intentions.

PROTECT YOUR UNIT

On how to protect your computer on this malicious programs, malware, and spyware, anti-virus comes in. Worms spread by exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems. All vendors supply regular security updates and if these are installed to a machine then the majority of worms are unable to spread to it. If a vendor acknowledges a vulnerability, but has yet to release a security update to patch it, a zero day exploit is possible. However, these are relatively rare.

Users need to be wary of opening unexpected email,and should not run attached files or programs, or visit web sites that are linked to such emails. However, as with the ILOVEYOU worm, and with the increased growth and efficiency of phishing attacks, it remains possible to trick the end-user into running a malicious code.

Anti-virus and anti-spyware software are helpful, but must be kept up-to-date with new pattern files at least every few days. The use of a firewall is also recommended.

In April-June, 2008, issue of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, computer scientists describe a potential new way to combat internet worms. The researchers discovered how to contain the kind of worm that scans the Internet randomly, looking for vulnerable hosts to infect. They found that the key is for software to monitor the number of scans that machines on a network sends out. When a machine starts sending out too many scans, it is a sign that it has been infected, allowing administrators to take it off line and check it for viruses.

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