viruses, trojans or worms what to call it...

Definitions... the way I learned it was that a virus is a program that does something malicious to your computer but is mostly transmitted by disk.

A trojan is a program that performs some function in the foreground while performing some malicious functions in the background unknowingly to the user. Such as opening ports or modifying the winsock.dll

A worm infects a computer without the user knowing and then proceeds to replicate itself to other computers through open ports or email....

Would you say this is a correct definition?

 

TAKEN FROM http://mcafee.com


What is a Virus?
A virus is a manmade program or piece of code that causes an unexpected, usually negative, event. Viruses are often disguised games or images with clever marketing titles such as "Me."


What is a Worm?
Computer Worms are viruses that reside in the active memory of a computer and duplicate themselves. They may send copies of themselves to other computers, such as through email or Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

What is a Trojan Horse?
A Trojan horse program is a malicious program that pretends to be a benign application; a Trojan horse program purposefully does something the user does not expect. Trojans are not viruses since they do not replicate, but Trojan horse programs can be just as destructive.

Many people use the term to refer only to non-replicating malicious programs, thus making a distinction between Trojans and viruses.

There ya go.

 

Hmmm I go there quite a bit but it is usually just to download stinger and check out the virus library.... Never thought going there for that.... Once again living in the box!!!!

Whoooo rock n roll....

 

Hmm... there seems to be a bit of an overlap there. Most worms are viruses too. They spread through a network of computers (or via disk...) through user-intervention or autonomously. Trojans, well, as far as I'm concerned thats somthing you put on your machine that allows someone else to make your computer do somthing, either by remote control or otherwise.

 

Somewhat implied, but not clearly stated by McAfee is the fact that all viruses are executables. You have to run the program to get infected by it. Which is why they're presented as something you'd want to run, either by doing something cute so you'll pass it on, or by being described by the sending email as something you'd want to run.

Worms are a class of viruses that are self activating and don't need you to click on anything. Either by using one of the famous Outlook/OE run-from-the-preview-pane, or run when the email is opened vulnerabilities, or by searching networks (either lan or internet) for other computers to infect directly.

A lot of both above classes are designed primarily to see how far they can spread, to feed the egos of the virus writers, and many have unintended bad effects because the virus writers aren't that good, or just don't care, but they can also have malicious intent and do things to the infected computer on purpose.

Trojans are executables generally in a file that you think you want to run, but are all designed to either open up your computer to outside access and control, or directly send information somewhere else, or both. Like it's mythical namesake, it's designed to get inside someone's defenses and gain access for an outsider.

Many of todays malware are "blended threats", mixing more than one, or more than one kind of attack, blurring the distinctions between the classes. A self-running hunting worm may search for other computers to infect, then install itself plus a trojan when it finds one.