Computer Viruses and its types & Browser

Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation. A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk. Most Common Types of Viruses and Other Malicious Programs

• Resident Viruses: This type of virus is a permanent which dwells in the RAM memory. From there it can overcome and interrupt all of the operations executed by the system: corrupting files and programs that are opened, closed, copied, renamed etc

• Multipartite Viruses: Multipartite viruses are distributed through infected media and usually hide in the memory. Gradually, the virus moves to the boot sector of the hard drive and infects executable files on the hard drive and later across the computer system.

• Direct Action Viruses: The main purpose of this virus is to replicate and take action when it is executed. When a specific condition is met, the virus will go into action and infect files in the directory or folder that it is in and in directories.

• Overwrite Viruses: Virus of this kind is characterized by the fact that it deletes the information contained in the files that it infects, rendering them partially or totally useless once they have been infected.

• Boot Virus: This type of virus affects the boot sector of a floppy or hard disk. This is a crucial part of a disk, in which information on the disk itself is stored together with a program that makes it possible to boot (start) the computer from the disk.

A browser is a software application used to locate, retrieve and display content on the World Wide Web, including Web pages, images, video and other files.

Types of Browsers:

Web Browsers are software installed on your PC. To access the Web, you need a web browser, such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

• Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer (IE) is a product from software giant Microsoft. This is the most commonly used browser in the universe. This was introduced in 1995 along with Windows 95 launch.

• Google Chrome: This web browser is developed by Google and its beta version was first released on September 2, 2008 for Microsoft Windows. Today, chrome is known to be one of the most popular web browsers with its global share of more than 50%.

• Mozilla Firefox: Firefox is a new browser derived from Mozilla. It was released in 2004 and has grown to be the second most popular browser on the Internet.

• Safari: Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X. It was first released as a public beta in January 2003. Safari has very good support for latest technologies like XHTML, CSS2 etc.

• Opera: Opera is smaller and faster than most other browsers, yet it is full- featured. Fast, user-friendly, with keyboard interface, and more.