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What are the common properties of computer viruses?

      

Discuss the common properties of computer viruses.

  

Answers


Maurice
(a) Permanence: Some viruses are able to ruin the functionality of different parts of the computer such as CMOS battery or master boot record. If a computer is formatted and the infected application or program is still on a backup disk, the virus can easily re-infect the computer.
Viruses can affect files or applications in numerous ways. They usually attack .com, exe, sys, .bin, pif or any other data files. Viruses have an ability to infect any file and often seek for executable files or data files including word or excel document to replicate.

(b) Transmissible: Computer viruses are small software programs which can carry other similar viruses, thereby making the virus dangerous. The primary virus takes a shelter behind the other or gain assistance to infect a particular section of the computer.

(c) Stealth: The stealth virus first attaches itself to files on the computer and then attacks the computer.

(d) Memory or non memory resident: A virus is either memory resident where the virus is first loaded into memory and infects a computer subsequently or non memory resident where the virus code runs each time a file is opened.

(e) Polymorphic: Some viruses have an ability to change their code. This means a virus can carry several amounts of similar variants. Email viruses that keep on changing the subject or body of the message to prevent recognition are believed to have same properties.
maurice.mutuku answered the question on April 14, 2018 at 14:00


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