Virus protection software - Answers
Q1. A virus is a software program written by someone on a computer in a programming language
Q2. An email attachment is a file sent with an email message.
Q3. A file extension are the 3 letters that get attached to a file name e.g. work.doc or everest.gif
Q4. Attackers can hide malicious attachments by using double extensions, e.g. "answers.txt.lnk" or "great_picture.gif.vbe". *.lnk, *.vbe and several other extensions are usually hidden. The file names you see are "answers.txt" or "great_picture.gif". When you double-click on them, you install a virus because .ink and .vbe can be used to do just that.
Q5. Apart from emails, sharing back-up devices is the other main way of infecting computers with a virus.
Q6. The best advice is to don't open any email attachments. The second best advice is to not open attachments unless you can guarantee where they came from, and this is far from easy.
Q7. The best advice to avoid catching a virus by sharing storage devices is to not share storage devices!
Q8. Free = AVG (free version). Paid =Norton. There are many others that can be found by searching the Internet.
Q9. You update your virus patterns in your database program regularly because thousands of new ones are written every week.
Q10. You set your virus program to update its own virus patterns automatically because you might forget!
Extension work
a- e: Worms are programs that can spread themselves via vulnerable network connections. They are standalone programs, unlike viruses, which ‘piggyback’ on other programs. In addition to unauthorised use of systems and causing damage, they can take up a lot of bandwidth as they spread and slow networks right down. A particularly nasty one called MSBlaster affected computers worldwide in August 2003. It spread very quickly, hunting for computers on the Internet without a firewall. When it found one, it jumped into the computer through the open communication port and infected it without the user knowing - until their PC closed down every time an Internet connection was made!! Trojan horses are viruses hidden inside seemingly innocent programs. They, too, can cause major problems for your computer. Malware is a general term for any malicious program. A Firewall is a program designed mainly to allow only authorised users access to a network and to stop worms and other malware from spreading across networks. A Firewall, according to the British Computing Society's 'A Glossary of Computing Terms', "is a computing program used in a large computing system to prevent external users (even if authorised) getting access to the rest of the system. Network users' access is restricted to a small part of the system and the firewall software prevents a user (including unauthorised users) accessing data or executing any programs in the rest of the system". Spyware is software that installs itself on your computer and then gathers information about passwords, what Internet sites you visit and other confidential information with the aim of transmitting it to criminals to use. You can download spyware programs unwittingly when you download open source or free applications from the Internet so it is always a good idea to only download software from trusted web sites. There have even been instances of criminals setting up sites that look like they are offering free anti-spyware programs so you need to be careful. Anti-spyware applications are available from the Internet. One that has been around for a long time is Ad-Aware.