Computer Virus Types
Help with Different Types of Computer Viruses
Protecting your computer from different types of viruses, security threats, privacy invasions, and unauthorized access is an important measure for both personal and business networks. It can be difficult to shield your computer completely from the thousands of computer virus types infecting the internet today. Once any type of computer virus is downloaded, it can self-replicate, self-install, and begin to damage the root functions of the most important programs and files on the hard drive. Most types of Computer viruses are designed to manipulate and replicate quickly and efficiently; they will open up security doors, reduce the strength of firewalls, and even download more programs that lead to the destruction of data on the computer.
There are many different types of computer viruses that are spreading on computers today, infecting them with various programs and commands that lead to dangerous symptoms and side effects. Depending on the severity of the virus, your computer may experience random downloading of unauthorized programs, false security alerts, damaged files, and frequent computer crashes. And when this begins, you will surely need help with your computer virus.
Both viruses and malicious software can work together to pose a significant threat to the business and personal computer domain. Some types of computer viruses are boot sector, multipartite, network viruses, macro viruses, Trojan Horses, computer worms, e-mail viruses and so on. Logic bombs and cross-site scripting viruses are less common, but still pose extensive threats to a variety of computer networks and users. Protect your computer and your information with Norton 360 Software.
Boot sector viruses affect the boot sector of the hard disk, which is the most important part of a computer that helps to startup and initiate all basic programs. The boot sector virus will start to spread rapidly upon each startup, and makes the computer system very unstable. These types of viruses can be found on free software CDs and other malicious programs. These do not affect any program files, but only the programs that create the files. They were prevalent in 1980s and some of well-known are Polyboot.B and AntiEXE.
Multipartite viruses are a combination of file viruses and boot sector viruses. These will work on a computer's memory system, and can execute destructive commands to the boot sector and program files to spread the infection. One of the famous multipartite viruses is Ywinz.
Network viruses (computer worms) spread across local area networks, and are commonly found in shared computer systems and office environments. They are independent software that can travel quickly across multiple networks, and can be opened via e-mail or downloaded from an unstable site, and can spread to all vulnerable systems on the network that do not have sufficient firewall protection or security measures in place. They can be very difficult to remove manually, and the more they are ‘attacked', the more dangerous commands they will execute. Examples of computer worms are Code Red, Nimda, SQLSlammer, MS-Blaster and Sasser.
E-mail viruses are often used along with Trojan horses, using e-mail as a vehicle to transport the virus and make copies of the victim's address book in order to spread. This often results in spamming and bulk e-mail lists that have no clear or identifiable sender.
Logic bombs are messages that are transmitted to the computer's base system that execute commands to delete files under certain conditions. These may seem like real messages from the user's computer, but are actually false alerts that result in triggering a series of events on a specific date or time. An example of logic bomb is "Friday the 13th" virus.
Macro viruses infect files like Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
Cross-site scripting types of viruses work on multiple site browsers and web applications; these can install themselves on cookie files and enter a user's computer through a security hole.
Trojan Horses are very often put under types of computer viruses while they actually go under malicious code definition. They claim or are presented to be a regular piece of software that you agree to download, but they do something else instead. Trojan Horses can “pretend” to be a screensaver or useful software (always free) while they are actually made to delete your files or open a door to hackers that will collect data from your computer. The data transferred from your computer can be existing files or recordings of your key strokes which can give information about your user names and passwords used for various things including Internet banking.
There are countless types of computer viruses on the internet today, and many can be prevented from spreading with the right tools and software protection in place. Norton 360 software packages and suites can alert the user of the threat and condition of the system, scan the computer periodically to eradicate any suspicious files, and be run in real-time mode which is the best protection from coming threats. Here is our page that shows how Norton 360 editions compare to each other. Get help with computer viruses today, pick up your copy of Norton 360 to clean up your computer and keep it safe in the future.
Be sure you know how to recognize the computer virus symptoms.