Please be aware that any laptop or desktop computer you bring to
campus must have anti-virus software installed on it. If you don't have such
software installed on your PC, please do not connect
it to BZU network.
-------General Information About Viruses----------
Computer viruses are called viruses because they share some of the traits of biological viruses. a computer virus passes from computer to computer like biological virus passes from person to person.
there are similarities at a deeper level. as well. a biological virus is not a living thing. a virus is a fragment of DNA inside a protective jacket. Unlike a cell, a virus has no way to do anything or to reporoduce by itself-- it is not alive. Instead, a biological virus must inject its DNA into a cell. the viral DNA then uses the cell's existing machinery to reproduce itself. in some cases, the ecell fills with new viral particles untiil it bursts, releaseing the virus. in other cases, th enew virus particles bud off the cell one at a time, and the cell remains alive.
A computer virus shares some of thses traits. A computer virus must piggyback on top of tsome other program or document in order to get executed. once it is running, it is then able to infect other programs or documents. Obviously, the anlogy between computer and biological viruses stretches things abit, but therea are enough similarities that the name sticks. of Infection
When you listen to the news, you hear about many different forms of electronic infectoin. The most common are:
- a virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program run, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs)
- An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens fo people in the victim's e-mail address book.
- A worm is a small piece of software that users computer networks and security holes to repliccate iteself. a compy of the worm scans the network for a nother machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then start s replicating from there, a s well.
- A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. the program claims to do one thing, (it may claim to be a game) but instead does damage when you run it ( it may erase your hard disk) > Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically.
