Everything You Need To Know About Computer Worms

You need not have to panic if someone says you have worms in your computer. In computer language, computer worms are a form of self-replicating computer program that uses a network to propel copies of itself to other computer terminals on the network.

Sometimes it does it without any user intervention. However, unlike a virus, computer worms do not attach itself to an obtainable program. Feature wise too, a computer worm differs from a virus since a worm will invariably harm the network by consuming bandwidth while viruses infect and corrupt files on a targeted PC.

The name computer worms originated from a science fiction novel published by John Brunner in 1975 after which researchers John F.Shoch and John A. Hupp of Xerox PARC selected the name in a paper named The Worm Programs, Comm ACM,25(3):172-180,1982. Since then computer worms have come to stay. And here are some examples of common computer worms that do more harm than we could imagine.