History of Virus
History of Virus
History of Virus
VIRUS?
A Computer virus is a malware program that, when
executed, replicates by inserting copies of itself
(possibly modified) into other computer programs,
data files, or the boot sector of the hard drive;
when this replication succeeds, that affected the
areas are then said to be "infected“
It is a self-replicating program that can cause
damage to data and files stored on your computer.
History of virus
The term “Computer virus” was formally
defined by Fred Cohen in 1983, while he
performed academic experiments on a
Digital Equipment Corporation VAX system.
Viruses are classified as being one of two
types: research or “in the wild”.
The first computer viruses were developed
in the early 1980s. The first viruses found in
the wild were Apple II viruses, such as Elk
Cloner, which was reported in 1981.
Function of virus
Viruses function have “evolved” over the Infect the
efforts to make the code more difficult to detect,
disassemble, and eradicate.
6 new viruses are found each day. 57000 known
virus programs are in existence.
These are programs written by programmers with
great programming skills who are motivated by the
need for a challenge or to cause destruction.
One manner of classifying viruses is to
analyze whether they reside in binary
executables (such as .EXE or .COM files), data
files (such as Microsoft Word documents or
PDF files), or in the boot sector of the host's
hard drive Resident vs. non-resident viruses:
Resident viruses overwrite interrupt
handling code or other functions, and when
the operating system attempts to access the
target file or disk sector, the virus code
intercepts the request and redirects the
control flow to the replication module,
infecting the target.
Many common applications, such as Microsoft
Outlook and Microsoft Word, allow macro
programs to be embedded in documents or
emails, so that the programs may be run
automatically when the document is opened.