Tuesday, July 28, 2009

what is worm

                                                                  What is Worm?

Dear Friends,

       We have already discussed about the details of Trojan and we will discuss about worm and how it endangers our computer and how we can get rid of from this. So lets start about where from it has come and what it is and how to get relief. 

      History: - Initially this term was used for good purpose but as the time passes it lost its importance to the world as the computer misusers misused it and changed its nature and character for their personal ill motive. The term "worm" actually comes from a science fiction story called The Shockwave Rider written by John Brunner in 1975. In short, the story is about a totalitarian government that controls its citizens through a powerful computer network. A freedom fighter infests this network with a program called a "tapeworm" forcing the government to shut down the network, thereby destroy its base of power.  

             But the world was not much aware about that word as it was not known to all but on 2nd November 1988 when Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University graduate student and son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA), when brought it in the internet from MIT to conceal the fact that it actually originated from Cornell, it became famous (????) to all as it caused near about 6000 to 9000 computer damaged and collapsed the internet but when he realized that it is causing huge harm to the cyber and computer world he then contacting with one of his friend from Harvard send an anonymous message about how to prevent them and how to heal the infected computer from Harvard over the network but as the internet was clogged it was not reached to anyone, which resulted millions of dollar loss. But as per his version he wanted to gauge the measure of internet and how many computers are in touch with internet and even he did not realize at the time of creation that it may cause such huge loss and it is heard that it was programmed in such a way that it would keep continue counting how many computers in the net has got infected. So this is the history.

      What actually worm is: - A worm is similar to a virus by design and is considered to be a sub-class of a virus. Worms spread from computer to computer, but unlike a virus, it has the capability to travel without any human action. A worm takes advantage of file or information transport features on your system, which is what allows it to travel unaided. 

      The biggest danger with a worm is its capability to replicate itself on your system, so rather than your computer sending out a single worm, it could send out hundreds or thousands of copies of itself, creating a huge devastating effect. Many worms come in the form of email file attachments, or as hidden additions to actual email messages, which trigger the execution of infectious code. And even some website contents may carry worm and when you click on them they will try to get installed if you don’t have good antivirus in your system.

Only a good Antivirus can stop and prevent the worm by its background scanning and keep the antivirus always updated.  

With Thanks

Urproblemmysolution team

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