网络工程英文文献和翻译--计算机病毒.docVIP

Computer Viruses What are computer viruses? According to Fred Cohen’s well-known definition, a computer virus is a computer program that can infect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a possibly evolved copy of itself. Note that a program does not have to perform outright damage such as deleting or corrupting files in order to be called a “virus”. However, Cohen uses the terms within his definition e.g. “program” and “modify” a bit differently from the way most anti-virus researchers use them, and classifies as viruses some things which most of us would not consider viruses Computer viruses are bits of code that damage or erase information, files, or software programs in your computer, much like viruses that infect humans, computer viruses can spread, and your computer can catch a virus when you download an infected file from the Internet or copy an infected file from a diskette. Once the viruses is embedded into your computer’s files, it can immediately start to damage or destroy information, or it can wait for a particular date or event to trigger its activity. What are the main types of viruses? Generally, there are two main classes of viruses. The first class consists of the file Infectors which attach themselves to ordinary program files. These usually infect arbitrary .COM and/or .EXE programs, though some can infect any program for which execution is requested, such as .SYS,.OVL,.PRG,.MNU files. File infectors can be either direct action or resident. A direct-action virus selects one or more other programs to infect each other time the program which contains it is executed ,and thereafter infects other programs when “they” are executed as in the case of the Jerusalem or when certain other conditions are fulfilled. The Vienna is an example of a direct-action virus. Most other viruses are resident. The second class is system or boot-record infectors: those viruses, which infect executable code, found in certain syst