Computer Virus - What is a computer virus?

Even if you are just now joining the world of computer owners, by now you will have heard the term computer virus. Most often this term is an associated with the significant loss of information or disabling of a large corporate or government computer network. However these viruses are more likely to strike at the home or small business computer user as they tend to be far less cautious with how their computers are used.

The Earliest Computer Viruses

As far back as 1972 the computer virus was merely a conjecture of the world of science fiction where the computers of today were still very much a dream of things to come. The first mention of a virus came in the book When Harlie Was Once by David Gerrold and then reappeared 3 years later in Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.

His concept described the virus as a worm that was capable of replicating itself in a manner somewhat similar to the tapeworm. The term virus typically describes the actions of the biological virus and the way is replicates itself within the organism that it is attached to.

According to recorded history the first true computer virus was created by Professor Fred Cohen of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio's computer science program in 1983. The virus he developed was a part of his doctoral thesis and when the concept was first introduced the term virus was coined and has been used ever since. At this Professor Cohen claimed that anyone could write a successful virus and that it could be done with as little as 11 characters of code.

Fast Forward

The concept of the computer virus is that it is malicious software that burrows into your computers operating system and works in the background where you cannot monitor what is happening. They can be introduced in to your computer inside of emails, legitimate software, and downloads easily because they are written in the same code as any other types of programming and then cause your computer to do things that you have no control over or is some cases wipe out all of the data stored on your computer.

In many cases the early viruses were easy to remove once they had been discovered, but as those who wrote the virus software code became more skilled, not only did these viruses become harder to detect, they also became harder to remove. By the late 80s the proliferation of viruses being spread on the internet spawned warnings against using floppy disks and opening email from unknown senders.

Today the viruses being launched have become very destructive in nature and can cause people and businesses to lose massive amounts of vital information stored on their computer systems if they are not caught quickly. This can result in significant financial loss and the need for an enormous amount of man hours being spent trying to restore any information that was not backed up.

The number of viruses that have been spread has given rise to a number of businesses dedicated to providing consumers both private and commercial with software that is designed to meet this problem head on. These companies produce software that is capable of blocking viruses or finding those that do get into a system and deleting it, having this type of software installed on your computer is your best defense against getting any type of computer virus and can save you a lot of time and money.