what are viruses?

www.romic-viruseshistory.blogspot.com.

The term computer viruses was first used by Fred Cohen in 1984 although the concept had been around much earlier than this. In fact, Thomas J. Ryan wrote and published a science fiction book in 1977 called Adolescence of P-1. He described the fictional development of a computer and took control of the operating system of 7 000 computers. Now, most computer users are well acquainted with the word. But what really is a computer viruses?

Biologically, we know that a virus is a tiny scrap of genetic code that attack a living cell and produces replications of itself. A computer virus is very similar. It is generally a small program that attaches itself to another program and often attack other software by making copies of itself. Just as biological viruses can also be spread from one person to another, computer viruses can also be spread from one computer system to another while swapping disks or via computer networks.

The latest count includes over 1 300 viruses that have infected the IBM PCs and clone alone. This figure does not include the many viruses that attack the Macintosh and viruses that attack other computer system. Many of these viruses are somewhat harmless. An early viruses drew a Christmas Card on the computer and then mailed itself to all other computers linked to the computer. Another early virus displayed a message “peace” on nearly 350 000 Macintoshes on March 2, 1988 and then erased itself. Other viruses are not so harmless. Many viruses will erase data; some will reformat disks and some may even damage the computer system.