Virus and Worms in Cyber Security
Virus
A virus is a program that can infect legitimate programs on a machine by creating a copy of itself (replicate). The virus spreads from one file to another without the knowledge of the user. A virus generally needs the manual intervention of the user like running an attachment in the email or running a malicious software downloaded from the Internet for spreading and infecting the machine. A virus can spread from one machine to another through email attachments or through USB devices or through other portable devices.
The virus can perform some typical actions like:
- Displaying a message to the user for carrying out a specific action
- Delete the files on the infected machine
- Scramble the data on a hard disk
- Cause erratic screen behaviour
- Halt the system
- Just replicate themselves to propagate further harm
Worm
A worm is a self-replicating malicious program. Unlike a virus, a worm doesn't need a host program to spread or infect the target machine. A worm travels from one computer to another through a network by finding different application vulnerabilities. Worms do not require human intervention for spreading from one machine to another. Worms cause harm to a computer network by consuming more bandwidth but may not modify any files on the computer. On the other hand, a virus always makes some changes to the files or memory on the infected computer.
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