LESSON 15

WHAT IS A COMPUTER VIRUS? [1]

Task 1. Read and translate the text:

Задание 1. Прочитайте и переведите текст:

A virus is a piece of software designed and written to adversely affect your computer by altering the way. It works without your knowledge or permission. In more technical terms, a virus is a segment of program code that implants itself to one of your executable files and spreads systematically from one file to another. Computer viruses do not spontaneously generate. They must be written and have a specific purpose. Usually a virus has two distinct functions:

• Spreads itself from one file to another without your input or knowledge. Technically, this is known as self-replication and propagation.

• Implements the symptom or damage planned by the perpetrator. This could include erasing a disk, corrupting your programs or just creating havoc on your computer. Technically, this is known as the virus payload, which can be benign or malignant at the whim of the virus creator.

A benign virus is one that is designed to do no real damage to your computer. For example, a virus that conceals itself until some predetermined date or time and then does nothing more than display some sort of message is considered benign.

A malignant virus is one that attempts to inflict malicious damage to your computer, although the damage may not be intentional. There is a significant number of viruses that cause damage due to poor programming and outright bugs in the he viral code a high percentage of them are very malignant. Some of the more malignant viruses will erase your entire hard disk, or delete files.

A malicious virus might alter one or more of your programs so that it does not work, as it should. The infected program might terminate abnormally, write incorrect information into your documents. Or, the virus might after the directory information on one of your system areas. This might prevent the partition from mounting, or you might not be able to launch one or more programs, or programs might not be able to locate the documents you want to open.