Virus Programming

Virus Programming

ABSTRACT

In the forthcoming discussion we are going to discuss the history of evolution of viruses, reasons to create a virus, types of viruses, different infecting techniques. Basically the seminar is for understanding the structure and working of different types of viruses so as to promote the thinking about programming antivirus techniques so as to tackle the problem of infection by a virus for a system and saving the valuable data on the system. The symptoms are also discussed so as to detect a warning of virus attack. Some examples are also taken into consideration so as to give a brief idea of virus attacks.


Introduction:

A computer virus is a computer program that can infect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly evolved) copy of itself. Note that a program does not have to perform outright damage (such as deleting or corrupting files) in order to be called a "virus". However, Cohen uses the terms within his definition (e.g. "program" and "modify") a bit differently from the way most anti-virus researchers use them, and classifies as viruses some things which most of us would not consider viruses.

Many people use the term loosely to cover any sort of program that tries to hide its (malicious) function and tries to spread onto as many computers as possible. (See the definition of "Trojan".) Be aware that what constitutes a "program" for a virus to infect may include a lot more than is at first obvious - don't assume too much about what a virus can or can't do!

These software "pranks" are very serious; they are spreading faster than they are being stopped, and even the least harmful of viruses could be fatal. For example, a virus that stops your computer and displays a message, in the context of a hospital life-support computer, could be fatal. Even those who created the viruses could not stop them if they wanted to; it requires a concerted effort from computer users to be "virus-aware", rather than the ignorance and ambivalence that have allowed them to grow to such a problem.