24 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
24 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
virus
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n. [from the obvious analogy with biological viruses, via SF] A cracker
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program that searches out other programs and infects them by embedding a
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copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan horse s. When these
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programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too, thus propagating
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the infection. This normally happens invisibly to the user. Unlike a worm ,
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a virus cannot infect other computers without assistance. It is propagated
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by vectors such as humans trading programs with their friends (see SEX ).
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The virus may do nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to
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run normally. Usually, however, after propagating silently for a while, it
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starts doing things like writing cute messages on the terminal or playing
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strange tricks with the display (some viruses include nice display hack s).
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Many nasty viruses, written by particularly perversely minded cracker s, do
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irreversible damage, like nuking all the user's files. In the 1990s, viruses
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became a serious problem, especially among Windows users; the lack of
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security on these machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting
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the operating system (Unix machines, by contrast, are immune to such
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attacks). The production of special anti-virus software has become an
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industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of
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near hysteria among users; many lusers tend to blame everything that
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doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks.
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See phage; compare back door; see also Unix conspiracy.
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