The Dark Side of Computing
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What is a Virus?
By Amy Y.Wong
Click Here for her research paper

. . .A computer virus is a program that is self-replicating (copies itself).

Many people believe that any program that does something malicious to a computing system is a virus. This isn't true unless that program can reproduce itself. Computer viruses can cause the loss or change of programs or data. Viruses can spread from one program to another and from system to system.

When the code of a virus is executed, it spreads itself to other programs. A typical computer virus does two things. First, it copies itself into previously uninfected programs. Second, it executes other instructions that the virus creator has included in it. Some viruses don't have any harmful instructions at all. Instead, they cause damage by replicating and taking up disk space. . . (see the above link to Amy Y. Wong's excellent paper for more details).
Windows Virus Security Software Companies


McAfee Anti-Virus(Win95,DOS,Win3.11,Mac)


Updates for Norton Anti-Virus, Central Point, NAV


Dr Solomon's


Inviricible
Invircible Anti-Virus & Virus Trap Anti-Virus


Sophos Sweep Anti-Virus


Leprechaun Virusbuster & Macrobuster Anti-Virus


Safetynet Anti-Virus network protection

(Win95/NT, DOS, 3.11)


PC-Cillin Anti-Virus

Apple Virus Security Companies

Samantec Anti-Virus for Macintosh