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Following are the definitions of words in the world of viruses. As you go
through our website in detail, you may come across those words listed below ( in
alphabetical order). If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail them to me.
 | Boot Sector: A small program that is the first part of
the operating system that the computer loads. The boot sector contains a tiny program that
tells the computer how to load the rest of the operating system. By putting its code in
the boot sector, a virus can garantee it gets executed. |
| Computer Worm: A worm program is
similar to a virus. The one and most important difference is that it does replicate
without needing to modify a host. Like viruses, worms may (or may not) do things other
than replicate. |
| E-mail viruses:An email
virus moves around in email messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically
mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's email address book. |
| Firewall: "A system or group of systems that
enforces an access control policy between two networks." |
| IP: Stands for internet protocol. you can see it as the
common language of computers on the Internet. It is important to know a few things
about IP in order to understand how to secure your computer. |
| IP Address: Like telephone numbers, IP addresses are
dialed in order to send data to another computer. IP addresses are typically shown as four
numbers separated by decimal points. |
| Trojan Horse: You must be familiar with the story of the
wooden horse built by the Greeks to sack the cities of Troy. Similarily, here it means a
program that sounds extreamly cool that makes you download it off from some place else
(the internet for instance), However, when you run the program on you computer, it
performs uncool tasks like erasing your disk. So you may think you are getting a neat
game, but it actually wipes out your system. A trojan horse cannot continue to spread very
far since it can be identified quickly according to its destructive nature. Note it's
different from viruses since it can not replicate itself. |
| Virus: The Key words in the definition of virus are
program and replicate; destructive action is not a requirement in the strictest
definition, but the street definition includes them. |
      
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