What are spams, worms, viruses, and trojans?

Question

i have a project and i need a summary for those things. tell me their definition, meaning, description, and origin of each of spams, worms, viruses, and trojans

Answer 1

A Computer Virus is attached to a program or file, and is

designed to spread from one computer to another. It infects the computer it is installed on, and is usually spreads when the infected file (usually an .exe file) is shared with others via email, disk, USB drive, or CD. A virus has to have human action in order to launch and deliver its “payload”. The file that the virus is attached to cannot open itself; a user has to open it in order to execute the virus. Viruses have many symptoms, depending on the intent. Computer viruses can erase or corrupt files and applications, crash your system by making

so many copies of files that the hard drive fills up, or make a computer

inoperable by altering critical system files.



A Computer Worm is like a virus in that it is also attached to

a file, and the file has to be opened before infection can take place. Unlike a virus, that is passed from computer to computer via user action (usually unintentional); worms are designed to self-replicate and spread without any effort on the user’s part. When you open a file that contains a worm, it starts spreading through networks and emails immediately. The main purpose of a worm attack is to bring down systems and networks by consuming great amounts of bandwidth and memory. Worms are also used as a means for a remote attacker to

tunnel into your system. Many worms will replicate themselves by sending “clones” to everyone in your email address book. These emails are sent out immediately upon opening the infected file, and may not show up in your “sent items” folder.



A Trojan is also included in a file, and like a virus,

does not propagate itself. Trojans are tricky, in that they are often disguised as some type of useful or interesting software. When the software is installed (Trojans are normally embedded in .exe files), the Trojan is activated, and sometimes you don’t even realize its there. Trojans can do many things, and while some are designed to be dangerous, others are just annoying. A Trojan might destroy certain types of files, alter critical system files, change your desktop icons, or simply plant a “backdoor” on your system that can be used by a

hacker or cyber criminal at a later date. Trojans are usually passed from PC to PC by email or disk file transfer, because the sender doesn’t know that the file carries a harmful Trojan.



Spam is unwanted junk mail, and just as you find that junk mail in your physical mailbox is a waste of your time and a waste of the post office’s resources, so it is that e-mail junk taxes the resources of computer systems all over the world. It is estimated that about 70% of all e-mail is spam of one sort or another.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Spam - is luncheon meat. In an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus ( a British Comedy sketch made by the BBC, there was a scene where a restaurant served a menu where every item on the menu had luncheon meat in it, a chorus of vikings sang out spam spam spam... lovely spam over and over again.) The term spam became synonymous with bulk advertising, where one message is sent out to lots of people advertising the same thing. The term spam is used to refer to the electronic version of junk mail.



Worm - means Write Once Read Many times, it often refers to a small piece of code designed to replicate itself. It is simply designed to spread. It is not usually designed to harm, but has unintentional side effects like slowing down networks, even crashing networks. Sometimes these effects are intentional. Sometimes worms have a payload (an additional piece of code designed to do something, like create spam, insert spyware or simply put a harmless piece of code on a computer - the geek's equivalent of graffiti tagging). Unlike a virus, a worm does not need to be attached to a message and clicked on to be activated.



Virus. Is a small biological organism that infects the body and replicates itself then infects other people to replicate itself. It destroys the host cells while making lots of copies of itself. A computer virus is a piece of code that does the same thing. It is like a worm but it has to be activated by a user, so it will usually come on a web site or an email or an IM that has an attachment, saying something like check this out it's really cool. When you click on it you will get a message like "cannot open file" so you think no harm has been done, but in reality your computer has been infected with a virus. A virus usually comes with a malicious payload which either activates immediately or at a predetermined times. Often it will delete files, crash your hard drive or do some other nasty thing to your computer.



Trojan - From the Greek term Trojan Horse. In the book Iliad by Homer, the Greeks couldn't get into the city of Troy so they hid soldiers inside a gift of a wooden horse, which they gave to the king of Troy. While the trojan army was sleeping, the Greek soldiers emerged from the wooden horse and massacred them. Hence the term, "beware of Greeks bearing gifts." The term trojan horse is now synonymous with a gift that has a malicious purpose.



A Trojan in computer terms is a nice program that does something useful but contains a malicious payload. It is designed to get past your firewall and internet security measures by offering something the user actually wants. In exchange for the user getting a nice program, the trojan opens up a way so that a third person can "hack" into your computer circumventing your firewall.



Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Spam: Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.



Worm: A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computers on the network) and it may do so without any user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or devour files on a targeted computer.



Virus: A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.

Answer 5

Computer viruses act much like medical viruses do. They keep your computer’s resources busy doing counter-productive things at the expense of what it should be doing until the life of the whole computer could be compromised.

Trojans are called by this name because these are programs that appear to be doing something useful or desirable (like the Greek “gift” of a horse to ancient Troy); in reality it is doing bad things to your computer.

Worms spread without user intervention. They typically start by exploiting a software vulnerability (a flaw that allows the software's intended security policy to be violated), then once the victim computer has been infected, the worm will attempt to find and infect other computers. Similar to viruses, worms can spread via email, web sites, or network-based software. The automated self-propagation of worms distinguishes them from viruses.

Spam is unwanted junk mail, and just as you find that junk mail in your physical mailbox is a waste of your time and a waste of the post office’s resources, so it is that e-mail junk taxes the resources of computer systems all over the world. It is estimated that about 70% of all e-mail is spam of one sort or another.

Answer 6

to simplify:



Spam - Unsolicited email.

Worm - program which actively copy's itself to other machines usually via email, networks or the internet. Can include

virus - program copy's itself to other programs, and relies more on the users moving files around via email, disks, or networks for the virus program to spread.

Trojan - a program which pretends to be legitimate, but includes hidden malicious code.

Answer 7

Definition of spam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)



Defination of worms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm



Defination of viruses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus



Defination of trojans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)

Answer 8

NOD32 - its what the hackers and virus makers use to protect their own computers. Its probably the best out there, just doesn't have the popularity for some reason...

Answer 9

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=What+are+spams,+worms,+viruses,+and+trojans&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8