What is a Computer Virus?

A computer virus is a type of computer program that replicates itself when executed by altering other computer programs and adding its own code or command. Daily our society advances technologically and the computers we use have become a very huge part of our lives. Because of the increased knowledge and high rate of computer usage, viruses have become a huge problem for users. Virus can attack computers easily, they can interfere with the operations of the computer, alter commands from the user, corrupt data and even delete data from the computer.

The computer virus can enter a computer through a number of ways like disks, flash drives, emails and the internet so it is extremely necessary to know about these virus. Normally a virus is designed to target a network file system shared filet in order to spread from computer to computer using network. Virus can infect a small area of a software or it will be present when the user opens or runs the program.

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Virus can be attached to Microsoft word, Microsoft excel or Microsoft PowerPoint or other software programs. It can be in any form or any file type. We have different types of virus like resident virus, direct action virus, overwrite virus, boot virus, macro virus and directory virus. Each of these virus affect different parts of the computer. For example the boot virus affects the boot sector of the hard disk or floppy disk. This boot sector is very important to the computer because the information stored on this part of the hard disk is stored alongside a program that enable the computer to boot from the hard disk.

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Examples of the boot virus are Polyboot., AntiEXE. The directory virus alters the original location of documents or applications. Once this virus enters the computer it is impossible to locate original locations of documents or applications affected by this virus.

In conclusion, as much as these virus are present there are ways to protect your computers. One of the ways to protect your computer from virus are with the windows firewall. This windows firewall is installed in your computer by default. It acts as shield for your computer, blocking viruses coming from external sources. It also has an automatic scan function which you can enable. This scan function can scheduled, let's say you schedule it for Tuesdays 11:59pm, it means that every Tuesday by 11:59pm your computer will scan your whole system and check for viruses and malware. It's also possible to use antivirus software like Norton antivirus, Mac antivirus etc. Using these methods, it's possible to protect the computers and keep our documents.

References

Updated: Dec 12, 2023
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What is a Computer Virus?. (2020, May 24). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/what-is-a-computer-virus-essay

What is a Computer Virus? essay
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