A virus is a computer program that is intended to copy itself to other programs and causes disruption to the infected equipment.
There are different types of virus. The Trojan horse is a virus which hides inside another program, a time bomb is one which is activated on a certain date, a logic bamboo is one activated by a certain condition Su as file being accessed 10 times, there are literally thousands of viruses around, some have been written maliciously. Others were designed to be ‘ nice’, such as displaying the message Happy Christmas, but then destroyed information as a side effect.
Doctors in the computer world are other programs, known as anti-virus software, or virus killing software. Anti-virus software can search disks oft viruses, then disinfect the disk if a virus us found. Gatekeepers exist which will scan any newly accessed information such as loading a file from floppy, or downloading e-mails from your internet Service Provider.Software is regularly updated to take account of the new viruses which appear daily. Most people update monthly. Anti-virus software is of fundamental importance in the modern ICT world. The only time you are safe is if you have a stand-alien computer not connected to any network, in which you use no disks, and only use legal software. (Even then I ‘m afraid you are not entirely safe, as viruses have sometimes affected legal software, such as the Notepad A virus which is a macro virus which comes with MS Word 6.0)
Viruses infect computers, we will never get rid of them, and must be aware of their existence, and use our computer equipment sensibly, including wrapping up warm when winter comes!
