What is a computer virus? What are different kinds of virus? Explain.
Answers
Answer:
A computer virus is one type of malware that inserts its virus code to multiply itself by altering the programs and applications. The computer gets infected through the replication of malicious code. Computer viruses come in different forms to infect the system in different ways.
different types of virus are -
Boot Sector Virus
Direct Action Virus
Resident Virus
Multipartite Virus
Polymorphic Virus
Overwrite Virus
Spacefiller Virus
Boot Sector Virus – This type of virus infects the master boot record and it is challenging and a complex task to remove this virus and often requires the system to be formatted. Mostly it spreads through removable media.
Direct Action Virus – This is also called non-resident virus, it gets installed or stays hidden in the computer memory. It stays attached to the specific type of files that it infect. It does not affect the user experience and system’s performance.
Resident Virus – Unlike direct action viruses, resident viruses get installed on the computer. It is difficult to identify the virus and it is even difficult to remove a resident virus.
Multipartite Virus – This type of virus spreads through multiple ways. It infects both the boot sector and executable files at the same time.
Polymorphic Virus – These type of viruses are difficult to identify with a traditional anti-virus program. This is because the polymorphic viruses alters its signature pattern whenever it replicates.
Overwrite Virus – This type of virus deletes all the files that it infects. The only possible mechanism to remove is to delete the infected files and the end-user has to lose all the contents in it. Identifying the overwrite virus is difficult as it spreads through emails.
Spacefiller Virus – This is also called “Cavity Viruses”. This is called so as they fill up the empty spaces between the code and hence does not cause any damage to the file.
Computer virus is a type of program written to alter the way a computer operates and is designed to spread from one computer to another.