What is a Computer Virus?
- Sunday, August 22, 2004
With certainty, I can say a virus must be a computer program. So, maybe the question should really be what are the qualities of a program that make it a virus and not an application? Intent seems to play an important role, but that's very subjective. Must replication and automatic propagation be present to define a program as a virus? What about the potential for causing damage? How do you define what is damage?
If you keep with a strict medical analogy, a computer virus is defined as parasitic and are lacking in internal organization. Living viruses also have a size requirement, from 20 to 300 nm, so I guess "small" should also be a quality of a computer virus.
Seems like a complicated topic. Any comments?
posted by Kevin Watts | 
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1 Comments:
A virus, to me, is a program that copies and distributes itself without your knowlege and/or consent. To me a trojan (or worm) would be classified less by its replication abilities than its ability to do harm to your system
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