LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Worms (Malicious Software)
built 186 days ago
Worms (Malicious Software) also shows up in the Retriever categories:
Worms (Animal) , and more.
Worms (Animal) , and more.
Worms and Viruses are self-replicating computer programs. A virus attaches itself to, and becomes part of, another executable program; ... a worm is self-contained and does not need to be part of another program to propagate itself. They are often designed to exploit the file transmission capabilities found on many computers. The main difference between a computer virus and a worm is that a virus cannot propagate by itself whereas worms can.
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Worms are a special kind of malignant file that replicates itself from computer to computer, instead of just from file to file like viruses. So while a virus can spread across all of the files on one user's computer, a worm can transmit itself to other computers via a user's network or email system.
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Worms carry out a number of different functions, and so different security techniques are necessary to protect against different types of worms. Some worms spread through vulnerabilites in network servers. Tech FAQ suggests that the best way to protect against computer worms is to keep "up-to-date in installing patches provided by operating system and application vendors." Some computer worms spread like trojan horses. The best protection against these worms is to avoid downloading suspicious e-mail attachments. .EXE files are very likely infected, but even seemingly benign Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel files can contain dangerous macros.
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Worms don't care who you are, whether you are a major financial institution or just a home user, if you have a system connected to the Internet you are at risk. In order to illustrate this we'll examine four major worms: Code Red, Code Red II, Nimda and SQLSnake, discuss the scope of the problem, its effect on your systems and some steps to prevent you from becoming yet another statistic. How many times have you been told, "You worry too much about security, it's not like we're a bank"? Or perhaps you're the one that has said something similar when the issue of network security came up. Attitudes like this are one of the biggest reasons why worms have been and continue to be so successful.
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Worms, as well as other Spyware, are constantly evolving and becoming more advanced to avoid detection. Worms along with its variants can install in different locations and even when you try to uninstall it you find they reappear when you reboot your computer.
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Some worms are unimodal, meaning that they have a single trick to exploit their way into a host; others are multimodal, with two or more ways to exploit a target host. A smart worm can be either unimodal or multimodal to gain entry, then once inside it can deploy arbitrary payloads that do the worm's bidding.
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Worms (Malicious Software)