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To understand the computer virus we must first understand the name and the history of computer viruses.

INTRODUCTION

Computer viruses had been around for close to 40 years now. The first computer virus was discovered in 1970 and was an experiment in artificial self replication. It was a self replicating program that infected the connected network of computers and replicated itself on the infected host machine. (Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C omputer_virus).The similarity to a virus as a living organism is obvious (attacking the healthy organism and than using the infected host to replicate itself therefore continuing the cycle).

Over the time many programs had been written by different people and for different purposes. First generation of viruses were developed as a mean to spy and slow down the competition working or researching the same area (crashing computer system of the competitor's research department, sabotaging the competitor's software, etc.). Governments used malicious programs in their clandestine operations as well.

However the real surge of viruses as well as complexity of the infection mechanism and difficulty of removal have surfaced in late 90's and beginning of the century. With the increase of the technological advances and decrease in the price of computer equipment both the means to create viruses as well as host systems to infect have became widely available.

Viruses had since than been developed by many different and socially adverse groups from high school kids looking to prove themselves to thieves and organized crime looking to exploit and extract the potentially valuable information from host computer systems.

With merging of the computer system with entertainment and business portal (we now use computers to watch movies, pay bills, keep track of finances) the rewards for criminals have increased. Breached computer system containing the credit card numbers of customers, bank information, social security numbers, etc. were all high value targets to criminals looking to gain an access to the computer system via use of the computer virus programs.

With the above in mind the semantics of the computer virus have changed as well. While the earlier generations of viruses typically carried a destructive payload (were meant to erase or compromise the host computer system to the point where it was not operable or usable to its owner) the new generation of viruses were designed to be stealth residing in the computer memory and working

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