Still on our Virus series, we will be talking more about types of Computer Virus. If you are just joining us, click the link below to read our last article to gain an in depth knowledge on what is computer Virus all about.
Having understood that a computer virus is a malicious program that is been coded by people, lets quickly dive into the types or categories of computer virus.
Types of computer Virus
Computer viruses comes in different types due to the fact that they are being developed by different individuals from different works of life and they build these malicious programs from different point of views.
- Boot sector viruses : Like the name implies, this set of virus commands affect the boot sector of a computer. The boot sector of a computer are the very first set of executable programs that the computer executes as soon as it is been turned on. These Virus has been designed with a certain set of commands that corrupts the computer immediately it is booted(turned on). Sometimes the virus could be aimed at stopping the computer from booting and other times for a different purpose all together.
- Macro Viruses: This special type of computer virus is designed for a particular type of computer programs. Macro viruses are written in macro-language to corrupt office documents such as the Microsoft word, Microsoft excel, Microsoft PowerPoint etc. This Virus are immediately triggered as soon as as Microsoft office document is been launched.
- Stealth Viruses: This type of computer virus derived the name from its special feature, it can be present in your computer or device and go unnoticed for as long as possible. This virus is capable of infecting a software without increasing the size or even damaging the file size. This is an extremely dangerous virus because it can be gathering your day to day information and sending it off to its attacker, just waiting for the perfect time to launch their attack. Some of these stealth virus tries to avoid been detected by killing the tasks that is associated with an antivirus software before the antivirus can detect them.
- Polymorphic Viruses: As a new day unfolds, new programmers create new sets of command for viruses. The virus community has evolved to a certain point that they utilize different methods to infect system files and applications. After this particular type of computer virus infects a file or program, it makes changes to itself to avoid been detected by antivirus softwares. This virus is very dangerous because people who develop antivirus, developed them in such a way to see a particular malicious pattern of changes and delete that pattern before it corrupts the system. So if your antivirus is not up to date to see a new pattern, this virus can easily go undetected even when you have an antivirus installed.
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- Multi-partite Viruses: This is an enhanced boot sector virus, this virus simply combine the features of a boot sector virus that enables it corrupt a computer when it is being turned on and it is also capable of corrupting your computer after it has booted (turned on). This is a very popular type of computer virus.
- File Virus: This is another popular type of virus, like the name implies; This virus centers its attack on files on your computer, phones and smart gadgets in general. They are still very much capable of corrupting softwares and programs but their prior objective is on system files.
- Metamorphic Virus: The metamorphic virus contains metamorphic codes that enables them to rewrite themselves completely at any point in time. They perform this feature of being able to reprogram themselves, anytime they are about corrupting a different software or program. These extra feature enable them to avoid being detected by antivirus softwares.
In summary of the types of computer virus we have; smart gadgets, mobile phones and all devices that has the feature of storing data accepting input and giving an output can be classified as a computer. In our next post on computer virus series, we will be looking at how to detect a virus infection.
We tried to categorize all the types of computer virus we have currently, it is possible we missed out on some other categories of Virus, let us know in the comment box below.
