SEMINAR ON:COMPUTER VIRUS

NAME:-RAKESH R.
KSHIRSAGAR CLASS:-T.Y.CO. ROLL NO.:-3013

INDEX: What is computer virus Types of Computer Virus What are the symptoms and indications of a virus
infection? Can I get a virus from reading E-mail ? Can a virus "hide" in a GIF or JPEG file? Future Design Ideas for Viruses How New Technologies Can Help Viruses Spread CONCLUSION

What is computer virus ?

A computer virus is a self-replicating program
containing code that explicitly copies itself and that can "infect" other programs by modifying them or their environment such that a call to an infected program implies a call to a possibly evolved copy of the virus

Types of Computer Virus : Trojan Horse Stealth virus Polymorphic virus Companion virus Armored virus Tunnelling virus

What are the symptoms and indications of a virus infection?

Programs take longer to load. Memory-intensive operations take a lot of time to start. A change in dates against the filenames in the directory. When the virus modifies a file the operating system changes the date stamp. The floppy disk or hard disk is suddenly accessed without logical reason. Increased use of disk space and growth in file size-the virus attaches itself to many files. Abnormal write-protect errors. The virus trying to write to a protected disk. Strange characters appear in the directory listing of filenames. Strange messages like "Type Happy Birthday Joshi" (Joshi Virus) or "Driver Memory Error" (kak.worm) appear on the screen and in documents. Strange graphic displays such as falling letters or a bouncing ball appear on screen. Programs may hang the computer or not work at all. Junk characters overwrite text in document or data files.

Can I get a virus from reading E-mail ?

In general terms, the answer is no. E-mail
messages are text data and will not be executed as programs. Computer viruses are programs, and must be executed to do anything, so the simple act of reading online messages doesn't pose a threat of catching a computer virus.

Can a virus "hide" in a GIF or JPEG file?

The simple answer is "no". The complete answer is
more complex. GIF and JPEG (.JPG) files contain compressed graphical information. Every now and then,rumors arise that is possible to infect those files with a virus in such a way, that it will spread when you display one of these images. This is technically impossible--no part of the GIF or JPEG format contains code that is executed by the viewer program.It is possible to use the least significant bit of the color information for each pixel in GIF files to store additional information, without visibly altering the quality of the picture contained in the file. This is called "steganography" and is sometimes used to transmit secretly encrypted messages

Future Design Ideas for Viruses

In a secure system, viruses don't often get the
opportunity to propagate or to execute malicious code. And when they do, they can be busted quickly, which would stop further propagation. Until they can do reach the climax of their life and die, they must survive, and thus avoid detection by the immunity systems of target computer systems (intrusion-detection software, watchful system administrators, attentive users). The main stealth techniques for going undetected can be divided into Polymorphism, Discretion and TrackCovering

How New Technologies Can Help Viruses Spread

Some of the technologies that make Windows
95 , 98 so attractive actually help propagate viruses across the network. For example, the workgroup networking environment is very susceptible to rapid virusspreading. Again, since Windows 95 , 98 has no file-level protection, unprotected drives and files that are shared on a peer-to-peer network can quickly become infected when any of the computers on that network become infected.

CONCLUSION : Viruses are dangerous, we should know how to

protect against them, however there is no reason to panic over viruses. The media tends to make viruses seem like they can destroy our computer at any time, this is not the case. we can maintain a relatively safe computer with a little bit of understanding and alertness.

REFERENCES:
A. Doumas and K. Mavroudakis and D. Gritzalis and S. Katsikas Design of a neural network for recognition and classification of computer viruses Computers & Security, 14(5), pp. 435-48, 1995. Allan Lundell Zeitbombe Computer-Virus Rowohlt, 1990. American Council on Education and United Educators Insurance A White Paper on Computer Viruses RZ MEMO, Number 3, pp. 24-31, 1989. Anonymous Resource Guide: Virus Protection for Networks Byte Magazine, 18(6), p. 144, May 1993.

THANK YOU !!!