What Is A “Virus”?
In the computing software terms, virus belonging to the category of malware that is able to, once executed, can infect files in order to reproduce, making copies of itself, usually without discovery by the user. Viruses may or may not be directly harmful to the host operating system, but also, result in a waste of resources in terms of RAM, CPU and disk space.
As a general rule it is assumed that a virus might directly damage only the software of the machine that hosts it, although it may also indirectly cause damage to hardware, such as causing the overheating of the CPU by over-clocking, or stopping the cooling fan.
In common usage the term virus is frequently and inappropriately used as a synonym of malware, thus indicating also in turn categories of “weed” different, such as worms, Trojan horses and dialers. Those who create these viruses are virus writers.
Life Cycle Of A Virus
Computer viruses have many similarities with biological ones for what concerns the life cycle, which is divided into the following phases:
- Creation: it is the stage where the developer projects, programs and spreads the virus. Usually the cracker for the production of virus uses a low-level programming languages (such as the assembler and C) to obtain viral code of a few hundred bytes. Dissemination of software packages that allow even novice users to create very dangerous virus declassified the creation process even for people without skills.
- Incubation: the virus is present on your computer but does not appear to hit any activity. Remains inert until you experience the conditions for its activation;
- Infection: the virus infects the file so the system
- Activity: the occurrence of specific conditions by the cracker, the virus initiates action harmful.
- Propagation: The virus spreads infection, reproduce and infect both files in the same machine that other systems
- Recognition: The virus is recognized as such and are identified string of recognition, namely the signature that distinguishes each virus
- • Grubbing is the last stage of the life cycle of the virus. The virus is eliminated from the system.
What Is A Virus, Where It Is And How It Works
A virus is composed of a set of instructions, like any other computer program. It is usually composed of a very small number of instructions (a few bytes to a few kilobytes), and is specialized to perform only a few simple operations and is optimized for use as few resources, so as to make them as invisible as possible. The main characteristic of a virus is to replicate and then spread into the computer every time you open the infected file.
However, a virus in itself is not an executable program, as well as a biological virus is not in itself a form of life. A virus to be activated, it must infect a host program, or a sequence of code that is launched automatically, such as in the case of boot sector virus.
The technique usually used by viruses is to infect the executable files: The virus also copies itself into the executable file that is infected, poses one of the first instructions that execute a jump to the forefront of his copy and the so it makes another leap to the top of the program. This way, when a user launches an infected program, it is executed the virus imperceptibly at first, and then by the program. The user sees the implementation of the program and does not realize that the virus is now running in memory and is undertaking various steps contained in its code.
Mainly a virus make copies of itself spreading the epidemic, but may also have other tasks much more detrimental (delete or damage files, format the hard drive, open the back doors, to display messages, drawings or change the appearance of videos, etc.)
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