What is Computer Virus? 5 Types and Antivirus

What is Computer Virus?

A computer virus is one of the biggest disasters that may strike a computer system. A computer virus is a program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. it may damage or corrupt data, change data, or degrade the performance of your system by utilizing resources such as memory or disk.

Some viruses can immediately damage while others sit dormant until a certain file is opened or a certain date passes. Damage caused by these can range from little or no effect on your system to complete system failure. some viruses are mildly annoying while others damage data and programs.

The computer virus has the following properties:

The virus can attach itself to another healthy program

This may reproduce itself and then can spread on a computer.

The Virus may harm your computer by damaging programs and deleting files on the computer.

It is difficult to trace a virus after it has spread across a network.

How does a computer virus Spread

Normal Programs are your assistants. Computer Viruses are designed to infect and potentially damage files on a computer that receives them. They are usually activated when the program or file to which it is attached is executed or accessed. A virus can only spread from one computer to another when its host is taken to the uninfected computer.

It can spread through the following media:

By opening an infected e-mail attachment,

By downloading an infected program from the internet,

Shearing music files or photos with other users,

Visiting infected websites,

By using an infected removable disk and an optical disk,

By downloading infected programs from the internet.

5 Types of Computer Virus

Computer viruses and their destructiveness vary widely. Virus behavior can range from annoying to destructive. Computer Viruses can be classified into the following types depending on the target of attack. They are of the following types: boot sector viruses file infecting viruses. Computer viruses also can be classified based on the techniques they use to infect boot sectors or files. They are the following types: macro viruses, polymorphic viruses, stealth viruses, parasitic viruses, and script viruses.

Boot sector virus

The boot sector virus is the type of computer virus that is designed to infect the boot sector of the disk. It either replaces or modified the instruction in the boot sector by some different code. This prevents the hardware from loading system software when the computer is turned on.

A boot sector virus is active when the computer is turned on or restart your computer.

File infecting virus

file infecting virus is a type of computer virus that infects executable program files having an extension .exe, .com, or .dill. This virus either overwrites or modifies the contents of the executable.

Macro virus

A macro virus is a type of computer virus that is encoded as a macro embedded in a document. A macro virus can spread through email attachments, disks, networks, modems, and the internet. for eg.W97M.Melissa & WM.nice day.

Script Virus

Script virus is the one type of computer virus that user interpretive programming languages. The virus instructions are contained in plain text files called script which is ready by “Run time” program interpreters. it can spread through e-mail, floppy disks, and CDs.

Stealth virus

A stealth virus is a type of computer virus that uses special techniques to hide its presence from users and virus scanners. for eg, Frodo, Joshi, and Whale.

Symptoms of a Computer Virus Attack

Some of the symptoms of virus infection are discussed below:

Erases the files or programs from the system,

Decreases the space in the main memory and hard disk,

The appearance of strange massage or strange patterns on the screen,

Slows down the system performance,

Formates the Hard Disk Drive

Application takes longer to start

The antivirus software that you have is not working properly, or it has been disabled,

Unexpected and unknown noises and sounds come out on their own.

Some tips for a Safe Computer:

The following is a list of some recommendations for safe computing:

Always scan files with an anti-virus application before using them,

Update your antivirus program periodically,

Do not load illegal software on your computer. The illegal software contains viruses.

Allow only genuine users to use the computer under supervision.

Never load unknown disks into your system unless you make sure they are virus-free.

Scan all e-mail attachments before executing them on your machine.

Turn on the Firewall of your computer operating system.

Update your operating system regularly.

Antivirus software

Antivirus software is a collection of programs designed to detect computers. Viruses from the system of the device. It must be updated frequently for protection against new viruses. It resides in the memory so that it detects the viruses at the time of entry and prevents them from doing any damage to the system.

Antivirus software typically performs the following tasks:

Scans files and folders for viruses.

It gave information when a virus is detected on the computer or any device.

Cleans virus-infected files.

Continuously monitors memory to protect the computer from memory-resident viruses.

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