Virus and Worms and its Countermeasures
Now lets learn the concept Virus and worms ? What is virus and worms ? How virus is different from worms and what all tools can be used to create viruses and worms …
A Computer virus is a self replicating program that produces its own copy by attaching itself to another program, computer boot sector or document.
They are generally transmitted through file downloads, infected drives and as email attachments.
Its characteristics are..
*Infects other program
*Transform itself
*Encrypts itself
*Alters Data
*Corrupts files and programs
*Self propagates
The Virus replicates itself and attach to a .exe file in the system. They are programmed with trigger events to active and corrupt files. Some virus infect each time they run and others infect only when a certain predefined condition is met such as users specific task.
There are many types of virus which get infected into the system and some of them are Boot sector virus, File Virus, Cluster virus, Macro virus, Etc..
Why are virus created by people??
Well as we all know every thing is for a reason and here are some of them, they are created because of the following:
*Inflict Damage to Competitors
*Financial benefits
*Research projects
*Play pranks
*Cyber Terrorism, etc..
What are the indications when a system is infected by a virus??
Now lets how the system behaves when it is infected by a virus:
*The process takes more resources and time
*Computer beeps with no display
*Drive label changes
*Unable to load operating systems
*Computer slows down when program start up, etc..
Below are some Virus creation tools :
*Terabit Virus Maker
*JPS virus maker
*DELmE’s Batch Virus maker, etc..
Now let us know about Computer Worms..
Computer Worms are malicious that replicate, execute, and spread across the network connection independently without human interactions.
Most of the worms are created to replicate and spread across the network, consuming available computer resources, some worms carry a payload that damage the host systems..
Using the payload the attacker installs the backdoor in infected computers which creates a botnet and then these botnets are used to carryout further cyber attacks.
Internet Worm Maker Thingis one type of a tool that creates a computer worm.
Here are some virus analysis tools..
*IDA Pro
*Online Virus testing tool: Virustotal
*Avast Online Scanner
*GFI Sandbox, etc..
Here are some Countermeasures:
*Scan the files when downloaded from internet or ur email attachments
*Beware when you install the pirated software
*Keep your antivirus updated and scan your system atleast once a week
*Possibility of virus infection may corrupt data, so usually maintain your data backup.
*Avoid opening your email accounts from an unknown sender.
*Run disk Cleanup, registry scanner, defragmentation once a week.
*Do not boot the system with infected bootable system disk
The best Antivirus I recommend to install are:
*Latest version of Bitdefender Total security
*Latest version of Kaspersky antivirus
*Avast Pro antivirus
Hope this article gave some basic knowledge about virus and worms and to protect your system against these threats .. J