What is the difference between a virus and a worm?
Problem is:
What is the difference between a virus and a worm?
Solution is:
| Virus | Worm |
|---|---|
| Viruses are malware that require some form of user interaction to infect the user’s device. | Worms are malware that can enter a device without any explicit user interaction |
| A virus must meet two criteria: It must execute itself. It will often place its own code in the path of execution of another program. It must replicate itself. For example, it may replace other executable files with a copy of the virus infected file. Viruses can infect desktop computers and network servers alike. Some viruses are programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or reformatting the hard disk. Others are not designed to do any damage, but simply to replicate themselves and make their presence known by presenting text, video, and audio messages. | This is in contrast to viruses, which requires the spreading of an infected host file. Although worms generally exist inside of other files, often Word or Excel documents, there is a difference between how worms and viruses use the host file. Usually the worm will release a document that already has the "worm" macro inside the document. The entire document will travel from computer to computer, so the entire document should be considered the worm. |
| The classic example is an e-mail attachment containing malicious executable code. If a user receives and opens such an attachment, the user inadvertently runs the malware on the device. Typically, such email viruses are self-replicating: once executed, the virus may send an identical message with an identical malicious attachment to, for example, every recipient in the user’s address book. | For example, a user may be running a vulnerable network application to which an attacker can send malware. In some cases, without any user intervention, the application may accept the malware from the Internet and run it, creating a worm. The worm in the newly infected device then scans the Internet, searching for other hosts running the same vulnerable network application. When it finds other vulnerable hosts, it sends a copy of itself to those hosts. |
Tags : Computer Networking problems solution, Computer Virus, What is the difference between a virus and a worm?, What is Worm, What is Virus
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