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Glossary

Virus

A computer program file capable of attaching to disks or other files and replicating itself repeatedly, typically without user knowledge or permission. Some viruses attach to files so when the infected file executes, the virus also executes. Other viruses sit in a computer's memory and infect files as the computer opens, modifies or creates the files. Some viruses display symptoms, and some viruses damage files and computer systems, but neither symptoms nor damage is essential in the definition of a virus; a non-damaging virus is still a virus.
There are computer viruses written for several operating systems including DOS, Windows, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari, and UNIX, and others. McAfee.com presently detects more than 57,000 viruses, Trojans, and other malicious software. (Note: The preferred plural is the English form: viruses)
See Also: Boot Sector Infector, File Viruses, Macro Virus, Companion Virus, Worm

- ZIP File

- Worm

- Windows Scripting

- Warm Boot

- Virus Hoaxes

- Virus

- Variant

- Vaccination

- VBS

- Tunneling

- Trojan Horse Program

- Triggered Event

- Timestamp

- Time Bomb

- TSR

- System Boot Record

- Stealth Virus

- Sparse Infector

- Sniffer

- Slow Infector

- Signature

- Shareware

- Shared Drive

- Self-garbling Viruses

- Self-extracting Files

- Self-encrypting Virus

- Sector Viruses

- Scanner

- SMTP

- Resident Virus

- Replication

- Redirect

- Real-time Scanner

- RTF File

- Program Infector

- Polymorphic Virus

- Piggyback

- Payload

- Password Sniffing

- Password Attacks

- PGP

- Overwriting Virus

- Operating System

- On-demand Scanner

- On-access Scanner

- Not In The Wild

- NTFS

- Mutating Virus

- Mutant

- Multipartite Virus

- Memory-resident Virus

- Master Boot Sector Virus

- Master Boot Sector

- Master Boot Record

- Malware

- Malicious Code

- Macro Virus

- Macro

- MS-DOS

- MP3 File

- MBR

- Logic Bomb

- Library File

- Key

- Joke Programs

- JavaScript

- Infection

- Host

- Hole

- Hijacking

- Heuristic Analysis

- Firewall

- File Viruses

- FAT

- Encryption

- Encrypted Virus

- EXE file

- Dropper

- Disinfection

- Direct Action Virus

- Denial Of Service (DoS)

- DOS

- Cookie

- Companion Virus

- Cold Boot

- Cluster Virus

- Checksum

- Boot Sector Infector

- Boot Sector

- Boot Record

- Boot

- Batch files

- Backup

- Background Task

- Background Scanning

- Back Door

- BIOS

- Antivirus Virus

- Anti-virus Software