Nowadays, there are many definitions for viruses, and a virus can’t be called a virus anymore. Ever heard of worms? Trojans? Adware? Spyware? Malware? What are those things? Are they viruses Read on to find the answer.

Worms Worms are set of programs that are created, as I’ve explained earlier, to infect any system that is connected on a network. Some said ‘worms’ originated from email attachments circulated on the internet. Whenever the email attachment is run, the worm will infect the windows, and will slowly crawl itself into the network that the system is connected.

Some of worms are known as the Mass-mailing worms. This mass mailing worms, once it has infected the windows, will integrate itself into the windows email client, i.e Microsoft Outlook, and will mail itself in the form of an attachment to all the contacts in the user address book

These worms are the most deadly threats in ICT (Information Communication Technology) during these days. This is because these worms know no boundary, and can infect millions of systems in a split second. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Trojans The ‘Trojan’ terms derived from the Greeks mythology, the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Have you ever watch the movie "Troy"? The one with Brad Pitt as the main actor. In the movie, or in the mythology, the Greeks were losing the war, so they devised a plan to trick the Trojans into their doom. The Greeks build a huge wooden horse as a gift for the Trojan as a token from their defeat. Hidden in the wooden horses, is a platoon of Greeks soldier waiting to attack troy when they bring the horses inside their fortified fortress. And the plan succeeded, the Greeks defeated Troy.

The same concept is applied for ‘Trojan’ in ICT lingua. Trojan is a malicious program written with malicious intent, and disguise as a valid program to run on your windows. For example, you download a fun game from the internet, or a friend gave it to you. You run the game, and so far everything seems to be okay. But what you didn’t know is, that when the game run, a malicious program that come with the game, run silently in the background.

And, if your pc is connected to the internet, the malicious program, which is the trojans, will connect to its creator, and will open a port which will enable the creator of the trojan to hack into your pc, and that is bad. The hacker will have a full control of your pc once he is connected through the trojan on your pc. He can do anything he want with your pc, and, that is very bad.

Spyware/Adware Spyware and Adware can’t be categorized in the same category as a virus. These programs are used for spying and displaying ads on your pc, as the name implies by corporations or companies involving in internet businesses. What are they spying? Well, mostly your data and habit on the internet. Why is it matter to them? It matter to them for their future marketing campaigns, that will bring them big money and profits.

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