25/09/2026
Viruses, worms and other malware
The best-known types of malware, viruses and worms, are known for the manner in which they spread, rather than any other particular behavior.
The term computer virus is used for a program which has infected some executable software and which causes that software, when run, to spread the virus to other executable software.
A worm, on the other hand, is a program which actively transmits itself over a network to infect other computers. It too may carry a payload.
These definitions lead to the observation that a virus requires user intervention to spread, whereas a worm spreads automatically.
Using this distinction, infections transmitted by email or Microsoft Word documents, which rely on the recipient opening a file or email to infect the system, would be classified as viruses rather than worms.
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