Virus (computers)

In the context of computer security, a virus is a piece of malicious software (i.e., malware) that has the general characteristics that the computer user is unaware of its existence, it has been installed without permission, and is an unauthorized consumer of resources. Qualifying the software as "unauthorized" excludes such things as remotely installed maintenance updates, since there is an implicit authorization, by the computer owner, to allow such updates to install and confuse resources.

Computer viruses differ from other forms of malware in that, like a virus (biology), they cannot "live" on their own. A biological virus must be a parasite inside a cell; a computer virus is a parasite to some other fully executable software.

A virus will propagate after some action is taken to "infect" resources in the computer. This typically requires the execution of some other program, which is either a legitimate program that has had virus code inserted into it, or a program that the user has been tricked into activating (e.g., trojan (computers)). Viruses, as opposed to worms, do not have the capacity to enter a computer and immediately begin to spread to other computers. Much like a biological virus can only exist inside a living cell, a computer virus only can exist inside a separately established program.

Viruses may only replicate inside the computer, altering and consuming resources, or may insert themselves into executable software distributed by the computer, such as a mail attachment containing a macro, HTML, or Postscript.