Computer viruses work much like viruses in humans. They have the ability to spread from computer to computer, they alter computer performance, take command away from the user, and can even lead to hardware damage.
As a result,
antivirus programs have been created to combat this. The major difference between computer viruses and human viruses, however, is that computer viruses are completely man-made.
The first known computer virus came in the early 1970’s with the Creeper virus. It spread through modem dial-out on to Tenex operating systems, showing a message saying, “I’m the Creeper, catch me if you can”. An alternative virus, the Reaper, was created to delete it. In 1974, the Rabbit virus appeared on computers the same way. Once it hit, it would rapidly reproduce copies of itself, bogging down computer performance, eventually crashing the machine. The next year, a program called Pervade was found piggy-backed onto the game Animal. Though it was not malicious in nature, it did copy itself into every directory in which the user had access. This type of virus became known as a Trojan Horse virus, or a virus which is disguised as something harmless.
The first wide spread computer virus outbreak came with the Elk Cloner. Elk Cloner was a virus spread through floppy disks containing the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system, and on its 50th use, a poem would appear, introducing it as a ‘program with personality’.
Viruses were not actually named such until 1983 when Frederick Cohen used the phrase to describe self-replicating computer programs. He would illustrate by using a virus-like program on one of his systems.
There are two ways of combating computer viruses, reinstalling the operating system, or installing antivirus software. The first is perhaps the most effective, but the least convenient. It forces the user to back up information before having to start over with a clean operating system, unless part of the backed up information is still infected.
Antivirus software is more useful, since it not only comes with tools to eradicate viruses, but it also now contains programs to check for possible threats like malware and adware and resolve these issues before they seriously affect the health of the computer. Many programs also offer to back up important files before making any major changes to the system.
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