第七讲 病毒常见问题解答.pptVIP

第七讲 病毒常见问题解答 Question: Can the CMOS be infected with a virus? Answer: No. The CMOS, where the PC system information is stored, is accessible through the I/O ports and is not directly addressable. A malicious virus can, of course, alter values in the CMOS as part of its payload, but it cannot spread through or hide itself in the CMOS. Any virus that hides in the CMOS RAM would still have to infect an executable object of some kind in order to load and execute whatever is written in the CMOS. CMOS stands for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. It’s a memory area that is used in AT class, and higher, PCs for storage of system information. CMOS is battery backed RAM, originally used to maintain date and time information while the PC was turned off. CMOS memory is not in the normal CPU address space and cannot be executed. Appendix Question: Can an antivirus program be infected? Answer: Yes. Antivirus programs are also executables that viruses can infect. It is therefore important to obtain them from reliable sources and trust their results only after running them from a “clean system”. Good antivirus software often include a self-integrity check and would give a warning if they have been unexpectedly modified. Appendix Question: How many antivirus software should I use? Answer: It is good practice to use more than one antivirus program but, by their nature, multiple antivirus programs may confuse each other. If you are a home user and you do not frequently exchange files with other people, one antivirus software would often be enough. Otherwise, it would be good if more than one antivirus program is used in checking your system to increase your chances of avoiding infection. Appendix Question: What are In-The-Wild Viruses? Answer: These are viruses known to be spreading uncontrolled in real-life systems, as opposed to those that exist only in controlled situations such as antivirus research labs. A virus code which has been published bu