How Do Computer Viruses Work?

Although almost everyone has heard of them, most of us may not know how computer viruses work. A computer virus is a piece of code, usually malicious, that attaches itself to legitimate programs, documents, or a computer boot sector in order to replicate and spread from system to system. People generally use the term ‘virus’ to refer to any kind of malicious software, but it actually is just one type of malware.

Viruses were first seen in the late 1980s during the rise in the adoption of personal computers (PCs) and since then, the world has seen the humble computer virus evolve from a silly prank into one of the most destructive forces in cyberspace. Computer viruses are of many kinds, serving different purposes and using different means of proliferation. But all of them share the same underlying concept — malicious code replicating itself to infect multiple computers causing varying degrees of damage.

Let’s discuss how exactly computer viruses work. Read More!