This Is A PowerPoint Presentation On Computer Viruses. This Presentation Will Show You What Can Be Done To Deal With The Viruses.

Mr Owen 10C

A virus is a software program that is specifically designed to duplicate itself to attach itself to other software programs. The first virus was created in the 1980s. However, recently, nasty viruses have been released which were deliberately designed by corrupt and delete files. An example of an extremely dangerous virus is the “Melissa” virus which was placed into huge co-operations and shut down their entire e-mailing system until the virus got so big that inevitably, the computer had to shut down.

Nowadays, the most common way to catch a computer virus is by opening up an e-mail with an attachment or visiting a webpage which contains a virus. However, you can also upload a virus by a storage device e.g. a floppy disk, a USB etc. In a nutshell, a computer virus is able to spread by allowing the program to run on your computer so therefore, any program that is run on your computer…may contain a virus !

A software that have been invented to detected and delete viruses are also known as a “Anti-Virus Software”!! Some examples of Anti-Virus systems are Norton, Sophos and McAfee. The way that the software works is by checking through all files on your computer and if the software picks up on a file that is dangerous and may contain a virus, that the software will ask the user if they want the virus deleted.

Here are a list of reasons how viruses can be avoided: Anti-Virus systems, scanning e-mails, not opening attachments from anonymous senders, not clicking on website offers, backing up your computers files regularly, not using software that has been copied, not allowing people to upload memory sticks onto your computer and using a special filtering software to prevent any automatic download of programs.

An application which proves to be useful to you. For example a computer game. However, a Trojan may also:

•Capture your password and then send it to other computers

•Allow someone else to take control of your computer … while you are online !

•Capture screen shot then send them to other computers. This would be fatal if the screen shots where pictures of your companies finance.

Worms are very similar to computer viruses however they differ because a worm is spread from computer to computer all by itself. A worm can severely affect your computers speed. Spyware, however, are programs designed to keep track of all the click on and then send specific adverts to your user.

The Computer Misuse Act made it illegal in the 1990s to send viruses to another computer. Anyone caught distributing viruses knowingly faces an unlimited fine and up to a five year prison sentence.

Almost one million Chinese computers were hit by viruses during last week's national holidays, state media has reported. Three different types of viruses attacked computers during the holiday week, Xinhua news agency said.

German government plans to spy on terror suspects by deploying malicious e-mails have drawn sharp criticism. The e-mails would contain Trojans - software that secretly installs itself on suspects' computers, allowing agents to search the hard drives.

Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs. The fake entries contain web links that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC.