Gadgetory

these days people seem to use words like malware and spyware a lot more than virus making the latter conjure memories of Windows 95 AOL CDs and Jeff Goldblum taking down an alien mothership so why is that what qualifies something as a traditional virus as opposed to the more recent malware designation and our virus is still around great question to understand what a virus is we'll start with a look at the original biological meaning of the word biological viruses like the ones that can make you sick are parasitic they inject their own code in this case either DNA or RNA into a host cell as a means of replication this code causes the cell to make a ton of copies of the virus and ultimately burst sending new viruses everywhere rensen repeats computer viruses operate via a similar principle unlike some forms of malware which are fully executable programs viruses tend to be smaller pieces of code that confused with other programs or files and only replicate when conditions are right so they can be triggered by a certain date and time opening a certain program or even hitting a certain amount of disk usage of all things after a virus is triggered it will try to copy itself and spread infecting other files and programs along the way sometimes over a network and just like real viruses these virus copies can be a little different from the original making it hard for antivirus software to eliminate them similar to how the many variants of the cold virus make it difficult to create a vaccine for some even come encrypted making detection even more complicated of course viruses biological or digital wouldn't be a problem if all they did was just copy themselves but just like the chicken pox virus will make you sick a computer virus can contain a payload that will cause some kind of effect which could be anything from just displaying a joke to permanently corrupting your important data these days viruses can trigger DDoS attacks which you can learn more about up here by infecting lots of computers and getting all to attack a specific server at once and since these annoying effects can be caused by other types of malware many people have used the terms virus and malware interchangeably but this is incorrect for example the famous I love you attack back in 2000 was caused by a standalone script or program disguised as a love letter and sent out via email attachment so because it emailed itself to other people in the victims contact list rather than relying on inserting itself into other programs to spread there was no host program that I love you infected it would be more accurately referred to as a worm rather than a virus and indeed many modern forms of malware like ransomware and adware are also standalone programs that can be passed around and executed on their own meaning that they aren't really viruses which doesn't mean though that true viruses aren't still around causing mayhem and the ill effects they can cause are only really limited by the creativity the black hats programming them have things like logging keystrokes to steal your financial data and attacking corporate networks as a destructive form of protests are just the tip of the iceberg so what can you do well even though modern viruses tend to spread over the Internet unlike the old days where they were mostly spread around bypassing corrupted floppy disks and flash drives around what hasn't changed is the importance of having strong up-to-date antivirus software installed to help prevent accidental exposure after all when risk of viral infection is on the line you always want to make sure you're using protection Squarespace is the simple powerful and beautiful website hosting service and a 24/7 live chat and email support and only cost 12 bucks a month and if you buy it for a year you get a free domain thrown in as well it has responsive designs it looks great on every device they have commerce modules if you want to sell anything on their site and they have a cover page feature if you want one of those beautiful modern one-page websites they also have a new image block 2.0 system with flexible layout options to combine text and M as you see fit start a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today when you do decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure to use offer code tekzilla our guys thank you for watching like the video if you liked it dislike if you disliked it check out channel super-fun we're doing we're throwing computer cases around today so that won't be there for a little while but check that out because that'll be super cool subscribe to this channel hit the little bell and hit the like' notify me when things happen on this channel thing to see all the rest of the tech cookie videos and I'll see you next time