Computer Worms & Viruses

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We have heard about the viruses that cause cold and influenza and hepatitis in human beings and worms that spread inside the body and cause damages.

Computer viruses and worms are in a similar fashion, able to cause discomforts and inconvenience, damages, malfunctioning and annihilations in computer systems. Even simple hoaxes have appeared, scaring the user of the non existant viruses.

These viruses often reduce the productivity of the organizations, destroy valuable information and reduce profitability.

The worms are malicious codes that crawl inside the cyber space and get unauthorized access to high security areas and either manipulate information or cause damage to the security system itself.

The main danger from these viruses and worms is that they are self propagating and spread like wild fire. e-mail is, perhaps the most favoured route of these viruses.

These viruses can make alteration in commercial and financial transactions, sabotage the intellectual property and disrupt the infra structure services. The people who gain such unauthorized entry into the websites and manipulate are called hackers.

Technically, the simplest form of hacking is perhaps, the one, which has been adopted by hacker groups in India and Pakistan. These people get into the control panels of enemy government websites and distort or destroy the original content or replace it with malicious propaganda.

The most dangerous part of these viruses and worms is the enormous speed at which the propagate. Viruses spread at a very fast rate through the internet. Some of the names of these viruses that have become familiar to most of us are “Trojan”,"bugbear", “Lover Boy" and so on. The addition to this list continues year after year.

The cyber technology. It seems, has helped the ill-doers more than the well wishers. The infamous Osama Bin Laden is reported to have used the technique of ‘steganography’ in which text messages are encrypted and hidden in the pictures of landscapes and human beings.

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