You might wonder why it is called a virus. Is your computer getting sick? Is it going to die? Obviously a computer is not made up of cells. It cannot get sick the same way a person does. So, why is it called a virus?
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To understand this, let’s take a look at the biological virus? Let’s look at the definition of “virus” as defined in Wikipedia:
A virus (from the Latin noun virus, meaning toxin or poison) is a sub-microscopic particle (ranging in size from about 15–600 nm) that can infect the cells of a biological organism. Viruses can replicate themselves only by infecting a host cell.
So, a virus infects a host and cannot operate without the power and energy of the host. The host is the thing which gets infected with the virus.
So, what we have here is a parallel. An organic virus infects a host (person or animal), attaches to the cells of the organism and spreads. A computer virus does exactly the same thing. It infects your computer (the host) and uses it to spread. The only difference is that a computer virus is obviously not organic. Instead it is simply another software program, programmed by an actual person, but programmed specifically with the intention to do harm or other make an effect that will be noticed.
So, a computer virus would be defined as:
- A program which is specifically designed to replicate itself. Copies may be exact duplicates or may perhaps even be slightly different in order to throw off anti-virus utilities looking for a particular signature.
- The replication is done on purpose.
- A virus has to attach itself to a host, in the sense that execution of the host program leads to execution of the virus.
To clearly understand what is happening here, it is important to realize that a computer is just a dumb machine that blindly executes whatever program instructions are fed into it. Programs can be large or small, and can have multiple purposes. Such a purpose could potentially be:
- To do harm to the host computer
- To spread to other computers
- To hide itself from anti-virus programs
From the computer’s perspective, the computer virus is just another program to be executed. The computer obediently does what it is told by the computer virus, whether the owner likes it or not.
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