Study Guide

What are Worms, Viruses, and Trojan Horses?

Worm

A program that makes copies of itself; for example, from one disk drive to another, or by copying itself using email or another transport mechanism. The worm may do damage and compromise the security of the computer. It may arrive in the form of a joke program or software of some sort. - Symantec Security Response Glossary

Virus

A program or code that replicates; that is, infects another program, boot sector, partition sector, or document that supports macros, by inserting itself or attaching itself to that medium. Most viruses only replicate, though, many do a large amount of damage as well. - Symantec Security Response Glossary

Trojan Horse

A program that neither replicates nor copies itself, but causes damage or compromises the security of the computer. Typically, an individual emails a Trojan Horse to you-it does not email itself-and it may arrive in the form of a joke program or software of some sort. - Symantec Security Response Glossary

What actions can be taken against Worms, Viruses, and Trojan Horses?

The fastest and easiest way to detect and remove malicious programs from your computer is to run your virus removal program on a regular schedule.  Companies like Symantec, McAfee, and others provide virus removal tools to help defend your computer.

What are the risks presented by Worms, Viruses, and Trojan Horses?

The risks of malicious programs within a system can be far reaching. University of Dallas provides a fairly comprehensive summary of computer threats and their ramifications in .pdf format.

What are the ethical implications of Worms, Viruses, and Trojan Horses?

The ethical implications of viruses are as simple as right and wrong. Articles on the ethics of computer viruses discuss the Golden Rule of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It is pointed out that you may wish to write a virus to get a program for free or just to see if you can get into a system to eliminate a piece of data or just to get recognition. But how would you feel if the same were done unto you. Though some people using viruses think they are doing it for fun, they should realize that their actions would not be acceptable to themselves either. The damage, loss, or suffering viruses cause someone else nearly always outweigh any gain or benefit or status the virus writer might have attained.