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| What is the difference between Virus, Worm and Trojan? |
Computer virus is a malicious program that has been written with only purpose to destroy months and years of hard work and make your computer, network or web-server inoperative. There are four categories of viruses, which can affect the use of your computer:
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Virus |
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Worm |
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Trojan |
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Macro virus |
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There are differences among viruses, and knowing about them can help you protect your computer from their damaging effects.
All viruses are attached to an executable file, so the virus exists on your computer but does not infect it without running or opening the malicious program. A virus is not able to spread itself without a human act, such as running an infected program, generally unknowingly, sharing infecting files or transmitting e-mails with viruses.
Unlike a virus, worm has the capability to travel via computers, networks without any human help .The principal danger is that a worm is capable of self-replicating, so it can spread out hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, creating a huge destructive effect, consuming a huge amount of system memory, affecting Web servers, network and individual computers.
Trojan Horse hides itself inside a program, which appears to be useful, but actually damages your computer hard drives, deleting files and re-writing system files. Some Trojans can change your desktop, adding silly active icons or can cause severe damage by deleting files and destroying information on your system. Trojans are also known to create access to your system, allowing use of confidential or personal information. Unlike worms, Trojans do not replicate themselves.
Macro virus distributes itself through documents and templates created in Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, causing data loss or improper work of Word or Excel software.
Some viruses attack the system files, operating your computer's hardware, and can cause reformatting of hard drives, deletion of data or stop of running operating system.
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