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With more than 50,000 known viruses, and many new and altered viruses being discovered every day, you need accurate, up-to-date information at your fingertips.
What is a Virus?
A computer virus is a program (a block of executable code) which attaches itself to, overwrites or otherwise replaces another program in order to reproduce itself without the knowledge of the PC user.
Viruses come in many forms. Some affect the boot sector of your hard disk. Some infect files or macros. Then there are Trojan Horses, such as NetBus, SubSeven and Back Orifice.
Some viruses are relatively harmless, and may be present for years with no noticeable effect. Others however, can cause damage to data files, over a period of time, or they can completely destroy files and disks.
Even benign viruses (apparently non-destructive viruses) can cause significant damage, by occupying disk space and/or main memory and by using up valuable CPU processing time. This causes a great deal of time and expense, which is wasted by detecting and removing them.
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Trojans and Worms.
A Trojan Horse is a program intended to perform some covert and usually malicious act which the victim did not expect or want, usually allowing a hacker to gain access into your computer.
A dropper is a program which installs a virus or Trojan, often covertly. One such example, is the JS Seeker Trojan, which downloads into your StartUp folder. The next time you start your computer, the Trojan manifests itself into your Windows Directory and deletes the evidence it left behind (in the StartUp folder).
A worm is a program which spreads, usually over network connections. They normally enter your system through infected e-mail attachments.
You cannot get a virus just by reading your e-mail. However if someone sends you an e-mail attachment, be very careful about opening it. Run a check with your Anti Virus program before opening the file, even if you know who sent you it. They may possibly have a virus that they don't know about and they could be passing it on, without realising it.
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Virus Hoaxes.
Have you ever seen a newsgroup or email message telling you about a new virus, urging you to pass the message on. Most of the time this will be a hoax. Most anti virus pages now have a hoax page to reassure people that the warnings are not true. Always check these out before forwarding warnings about viruses.
See: Symantec Hoaxes
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How do I know if I have a Virus?
There are some companies who perform on-line virus scans which examine your computer system over the Internet. Norton and McAfee will do this for you, although, you are probably better to invest in some Anti Virus Software yourself. They usually come with free Internet updates (virus definitions).
When you have these products installed on your computer, you should update them as often as possible, because there are so many new viruses emerging every week.
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