Over the years, the computer viruses have really changed. There are viruses that destroy files, delete system files and reside in memory. There is now a thin line between worms, malwares and viruses. As antivirus programs evolve to fight current computer viruses, new ones come to life. Nevertheless, these new ones belong to a particular type of computer virus. Here are the types of computer viruses.
The first type of virus is the macro virus. The micro virus spreads itself through logic developed through macro programming. The macro virus usually live, spread and infect through programs that use macro programming including MS Word, MS Excel and usually attack files with these extensions.
Memory resident viruses are not your ordinary virus. Instead of staying in ordinary memory location, they stay in the random access memory (RAM). They are also powered on by another virus that is on ordinary memory. They continue to run and wreck havoc even though the initiator virus has already been deleted.
Logic bombs or time bombs are also common today. These are viruses that are executed through a program at a particular date or a particular event of an application. There are viruses for example that delete your files on the eve of Halloween. Programmers can also initiate database deletion when they get fired or removed from the system.
There are still more types of virus out there and new ones are created everyday. As new ones arrive, new set of antivirus programs are also created in the hope of preventing the new ones to spread and destroy.