Worm

What is a worm?

A computer worm is a computer program that make use a computer network to self-replicate itself to another computer attach to the network. The process of infection may do so with or without any user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Computer worms do more harms to the network as they consume the bandwidth of the communication link, whereas viruses always infect or corrupt files on a targeted computer.

Although computer worm only designed to spread from one computer to another one without doing any corrupts to the computer system and files, there are some worm with have extra malicious code to do specific tasks. With this extra malicious code, the worms do more than spreading itself. They cause major disruption on the network traffic, delete and encrypt files on a host system, install a backdoor, send spam etc.

Worms mainly spread by exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems, or by tricking users to assist them. So update security patches of your operating systems low the risk of attack by worms. Other important protection is installed antivirus and antispyware software, but must be kept up-to-date with new pattern files at least every few days.

Safe computer tips

Most of worms come from email attachment so users need to be wary of opening unexpected email, and should not run attached files or programs, or visit web sites that are linked to such emails.

Use alternative email client like thunderbird may help.