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Thread: worms vs viruses

  1. #1
    Senior Member
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    Jun 2003
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    Question worms vs viruses

    Dear friends,
    please do tell me the main distinction between viruses and worms.
    happy holi to you all.
    thanks.
    Now is the moment, or NEVER!!!

  2. #2
    AntiOnline n00b
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
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    666
    hi
    hi first let me wish you Happy Holi ( the festival of colors)

    And for the Difference between Worm and A virus. the basic difference to me is that a virus needs a host program a worm does not it propagets thrioug the network without any human intervintion
    for more Check this out and This

    [edit]
    I found this one interseting too
    A virus is a file that cannot spread to other computers unless a infected file is copied and sent manualy to another computer were as a worm just does the opposite:

    A worm is a wonderous creation that once in your machine usually copies itself and spreads using, irc, outlook or n e other applicable mailing unit, or as blaster just recently showed us using exploitations in ports on your computer... Usually a worm just uses ur computer as basically a server to spread as fast and silently as it can but others can have payloads attached to them, like a message box, or a deleting of certain files or shutdown of your computer, or just basically crashing your computer... Worms try to hide themselves as best they can(usually) but most of the time get caught really easily(look at blaster)

    A virus once executed on your machine infects either com, exe or sys files or a combination of all three... Viruses are alot harder to get off your mmachine or even to get rid of... They have alot less spreading options then a worm does cuz viruses only infect files on ur machine... Usually viruses have a payload after infecting all files a certain number of files a certain time or date or just right after its infection takes place... These payloads differ but can be the same as the worms payloads or worse(i dont know wuts more worse then crashing sum1s machine but there must be much worse i guess)

    Now this is pretty rare but sometimes there are combinations of the two.. A virus/worm combination can be EXTREMELY deadly. It can spread like wildfire through your machine and other machines upon which it can have payloads of crashing your computer or a network of computers while spreading to more computers.. There have been a select phew that do these tasks but there still are some out there and are very dangerous... Hope this helped a little bit

  3. #3
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hi,

    I take a somewhat traditional view in that worms travel or spread usually down a network, via e-mail or P2P type applications.

    Viruses have to infect boot sectors, files, executables, so they only move if the infected item moves. In the old days this was usually via magnetic media, but more recently it has been through infected items in websites, macro attachments to Office documents, e-mail attachments, and so on.

    Some worms will "hook" a process, but they don't actually infect it, they just "go along for the ride" to make sure that they run.

    There is malware that displays both characteristics, these days, so it is not a clear cut definition. I think that one can still say that if it does not "infect" something, then it is NOT a virus?

    Just my thoughts

    Happy Holi as well

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