What is a Computer Virus?

Before we can comprehend how a computer virus works, it is important to realise what a virus does when it attacks the human body. A virus is a small organism that is only able to reproduce itself within another living cell or body. It is typically harmful to the cell or body in which it lives, and is the cause of many illnesses and diseases.

The word virus comes from Latin and literally means ‘poison’ and that is basically what it is - a ‘poison’, able to reproduce itself within another cell or body and an example of an illness caused by a virus is the flu. How does this relate to computers? The virus can be anywhere on your computer, concealed within a program, file or document.

Criminals, and other talented idiots with nothing better to do with their time, create these viruses and spread them to other people’s computers. This activity’s sole purpose is to create trouble and damage for every pc user. Similar to a common virus like the flu (which spreads from person to person), the computer virus has the ability to spread and ‘infect’ other computers, files or documents. Files and documents; such as word-processing documents, spreadsheets, emails, computer programs etc can have a computer virus spread through them. As well as through removable storage devices such as memory sticks and floppy disks, it can spread itself through the Internet and through local computer networks. It can be unknowingly spread to other computers by the computer user since it is hidden and therefore hard to detect.

Well, it works similarly to viruses (like the flu) that make a person sick. In fact, a ‘digital virus’ will make your computer ill, some can be very harmful, while others are created to simply annoy and just what each type will do to your computer depends on what it has been programmed to do. Macro Viruses, Email Viruses and Trojan Horses. Understanding the basics of what viruses are is the first step to learning what to do about them, and how to be completely in control of your computer’s security.