Malware
The term malware defines any program or code (macro, script, and so on) designed to do something on a system or network that you don’t want to have happen. Malware comes in quite a variety of guises, such as viruses, worms, macros, Trojans, rootkits, adware, and spyware. Let’s examine all these malware flavors and then finish with how to deal with them.
Virus
A virus is a program that has two jobs: to replicate and to activate. Replication means it makes copies of itself, often as code stored in boot sectors or as extra code added to the end of executable programs. Activation is when a virus does something like erase the boot sector of a drive. A virus only replicates to other drives, such as thumb drives or optical media. It does ...

Get Mike Meyers’ CompTIA Network+ Certification Passport, 4th Edition (Exam N10-005), 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.