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What is computer virs?Define types of computer virus.

(Assignment-2 Semester winter season -2019)

(December 12,2019)

BY

SHAKILA ANJUM

ROLL # 18071517-002

IT-301 (Introduction to Computer Applications)


Bs. Translation studies

Submitted To

Sir Kamran
Centre for language and translation studies

UNIVRSITY OF GUJRAT
Contents

What is computer virus?


What is a computer virus?

Think of a biological virus – the kind that makes you sick. It’s persistently nasty, keeps you from

functioning normally, and often requires something powerful to get rid of it. A computer virus is very

similar. Designed to replicate relentlessly, computer viruses infect your programs and files, alter the

way your computer operates or stop it from working altogether.

In 2013, the botnet virus Gameover ZueS was discovered to use peer-to-peer downloading sites to

distribute ransomware and commit banking fraud. While tens of thousands of computer viruses still

roam the internet, they have diversified their methods and are now joined by a number of malware

variants like worms, Trojans, and ransomware.

How does a computer virus find me?

Even if you’re careful, you can pick up computer viruses through normal Web activities like:

• Sharing music, files, or photos with other users

• Visiting an infected website

• Opening spam email or an email attachment


• Downloading free games, toolbars, media players and other system utilities

• Installing mainstream software applications without thoroughly reading license agreements

What does a computer virus do?

Some computer viruses are programmed to harm your computer by damaging programs, deleting

files, or reformatting the hard drive. Others simply replicate themselves or flood a network with

traffic, making it impossible to perform any internet activity. Even less harmful computer viruses can

significantly disrupt your system’s performance, sapping computer memory and causing frequent

computer crashes.

Computer viruses have been around for quite a bit and nearly all of them have been spread through

the Internet or its predecessors. Most viruses have been designed to steal users’ information,

processing power and/or disable the system all together.

The first computer virus, called “Creeper system”, was an experimental self-replicating virus released

in 1971. It was filling up the hard drive until a computer could not operate any further. This virus was

created by BBN technologies in the US.


The first computer virus for MS-DOS was “Brain” and was released in 1986. It would overwrite the

boot sector on the floppy disk and prevent the computer from booting. It was written by two brothers

from Pakistan and was originally designed as a copy protection.

“The Morris” was the first Computer virus which spread extensively in the wild in 1988. It was written

by Robert Morris, a graduate student from Cornell University who wanted to use it to determine the

size of the internet. His approach used security holes in sendmail and other Unix applications as well

as weak passwords, but due to a programming mistake it spread too fast and started to interfere with

the normal operation of the computers. It infected around 15,000 computers in 15 hours, which back

then was most of the internet.

Since then, many new viruses have been introduced and the trend is growing exponentially every

year.

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