What is a computer virus?
Computer viruses are also known as computer viruses , cyber viruses, electronic viruses, or simply viruses. A computer virus is any programming coding in low level languages (assembler), high level such as C++, Visual C++, Borland Delphi, Visual Basic, etc. or simply language scripts and that are expressly developed to destroy, manipulate or steal information from our PC, all this without the user’s permission or knowledge.
Viruses can intentionally destroy the data stored on a computer, although there are also other more “benign” ones, which are only characterized by being annoying. To cause massive damage, they contain propagation routines to other systems using various methodologies or Internet services.
The effects of a virus are many and depend on the intention of the actions, malfunctions or destructive effects of its creators.
They are called viruses, since, like biological species, they are small, self-reproduce and infect a receiving entity from a transmitting entity. They spread through various methods.
For a virus to infect a system, it must be executed, it cannot infect a system if it has only been copied. In the case of macro viruses (Word and Excell), the system warns, as it asks if you want to run the macro, which unfortunately can be either a harmless program or a virus. Usually the first thing viruses do is disable that warning.
When a virus is executed, it performs a series of instructions known as the active payload of the virus . The active load may upset or modify data files, display a certain message, or cause operating system crashes. There are viruses that are not even designed to be activated, so they only take up space on the disk, or in memory.
Characteristics of a computer virus
They are computer programs: In computing, program is synonymous with Software, that is, the set of instructions that a computer or computer executes.
It is harmful: A computer virus always causes damage to the system it infects, but it is worth clarifying that doing damage does not mean that it will break something. The damage can be implicit when what is sought is to destroy or alter information or it can be situations with negative effects for the computer, such as consumption of main memory, processor time.
It is auto player: The most important feature of this type of program is to create copies of itself, something that no other conventional program does. Let’s imagine that if everyone had this ability we could install a word processor and a couple of days later we would have three or more of them.
It is surreptitious: This means that it will use various techniques to prevent the user from noticing its presence. The first measure is to have a reduced size to be able to be hidden at first sight. It can manage to manipulate the result of a request to the operating system to show the size of the file and even all its attributes.
