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Avast Home Edition 4.8.1229.80923 is a free antivirus, and it was released this year September 23, 2008. Even if it was just released less than a month (since the date today is Oct 8), 30,937,233 people have already downloaded this program at Download.com. Even the Editor of Download.com has given Avast Home Edition a perfect score 5/5. It just proves that Avast Home Edition is a program worthy for our attention. This program has the following workings, according to the publisher’s description: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, choose what you want to scan and just press the play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging–ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic–intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield–monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner–scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner–scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.
Anti-virus software is responsible in treating your computer if it is infected by some viruses. It is like the first line of defense or immune system of your computer. It acts in order to destroy the found virus automatically and with instructions, you can heal the infected area. The effectiveness of anti-virus varies according to its type. There are two in kinds. The free ware and the one that can be bought online via internet access and applying for their payment basis using credit cards or visa cards. The one that is being sold on the net is more reliable because it has technical support and customer service. In other words, the extent of its effectiveness is efficient compared to the free ware anti-virus. Because the developer or the authorized distributor of that software will be held responsible in updating versions of the anti-virus software where in every version, there is a special feature making way to convenience of having an efficient and effective anti-virus software installed to update your computer everyday
In the passed few years, there has been computer viruses that took great effect on global economic growth. However, there are these viruses that have cause millions, worse, billions of dollars loss. Here are the top 10 most destructive computer viruses of all time according to techweb:
1. CIH (1998)
Estimated Damage: 20 to 80 million dollars worldwide, countless amounts of PC data destroyed
Unleashed from Taiwan in June of 1998
2. Melissa (1999)
Estimated Damage: 300 to 600 million dollars
3. ILOVEYOU (2000)
Estimated Damage: 10 to 15 billion dollars
4. Code Red (2001)
Estimated Damage: 2 billion and 600 million dollars (2.6B $)
5. SQL Slammer (2003
Estimated Damage: Because SQL Slammer erupted on a Saturday, the damage was low in dollars and cents. However, it hit 500,000 servers world wide and actually shut down South Korea’s online capacity for 12 hours.
6. Blaster (2003)
Estimated Damage: 2 to 10 billion dollars, hundreds of thousands of infected PCs
7. Sobig.F (2003)
Estimated Damage: 5 to 10 billion dollars, over 1 million PCs infected
8. Bagle (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars…and counting
9. MyDoom (2004)
Estimated Damage: At its peak, slowed global Internet performance by 10 percent and Web load times by up to 50 percent
10. Sasser (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars
The effect of computer virus is really serious because it can harm not only computers, same is true with the life of others.
Virus is a threat that is contagious for it infects your files as well as other programs installed on your computer. A computer virus should be attached on top of other program or document in order to launch. Once it is running, it will now start the onset of infecting other programs or documents. Maybe a lot of computer users would ask about from whom or where does computer virus come from? Well sadly, it comes from computer users also. These people write the computer virus in which he or she is required to write the code, put it to a test to be assured that if it will infects a program, it will run and spreads properly. If the test is successful, that person will release the virus. There are various reasons as to why some people make computer viruses:
1. For them, making unusual things such as making computer virus gives them thrill or excitement to boast that he or she knows much about computer programs to the extent that he or she may channel energy in creating destructive viruses.
2. Fascination pushes a person to make a computer virus in the sense that when the virus is already released, he or she would sit back and enjoy the scenario as things blow up with somebody’s computer.
3. Curiosity also is one of the components as to why some people are interested to make destructive viruses. One wants to exploit things first before others would. It’s like grabbing the opportunity to test something dreadful and see how masses would react.
Computer virus creators are overlooking the fact that they can cause real damage not only to hard disks of the computer, but with real people who are not aware about such things.
An internet firewall is a system or cluster of system that enforces an access control policy between two or more networks. Firewall can be a pair of mechanism in which one performs blockage and the other is permission. As said in above statement, firewall enforces an access control policy in which it depends on it of what kind of access to be allowed or denied. If you have a good idea about what access to be denied and allowed, firewall will be useful. Firewall has configuration which should be updated and given emphasis to enforce the policy. The importance of a firewall is that it protects you from being intruded or keeping out bad ‘stuffs’ out of your network while doing or finishing your job. Firewall is often used by huge corporations for the purpose of protecting the data about corporate products and services or files to download and the like. Firewall is like a preventive measure that guards your network from any harmful ‘stuffs’ that can corrupt important data.
A computer virus is actually a program that infects other programs with its own copy. The virus replicates itself from disk to another disk or system to another system through computer networking. The role of the virus is to perform and does its damage if the program has been infected already. Moreover, the system will also be susceptible to other types of destructive programs that are not classified as virus, instead it is termed as spy wares. Computer viruses are harmless depending on its content. At the same the virus may be considerable harmful if it does damages by destroying boot records, file tables and important data on disk. Backing up important files is a must to prevent from losing all of it due to a virus that spreads on your system, thus, infecting all of the important data stored or saved on your computer’s memory.
The best anti-virus software today come with essentially multiple virus scanning options. This allows users to create schedules for scanning. Users also benefit from advanced scanning options that provide them the access to various location-specific scans and real-time scanning which enable computers to automatically scan for viruses every few minutes to stop viruses from causing damage almost all the time. Complete and optimal system protection is obtained from anti-virus programs that are updated regularly. This is the answer to the fact that viruses are actively being created everyday, or worse, every minute. Over-all, the best thing that an anti-virus software can provide to its users is the peace of mind.
There are a lot of components that can cause virus on your computer. One is downloading on the internet not knowing that it is infected with virus. Virus is attached with the program or file that you are to download. If the all downloads have been completed and unfortunately, it has virus, it will be transmitted to other files or programs in your computer infecting them. Another one is accepting or receiving files from other sources (from other computer directly to your computer). It is convenient to receive or accept files directly to your computer from another computer. Because it takes you little time to receive it. However, it is also a disadvantage when it comes to scanning it for any virus. If you are to accept or receive files from other source, it will be directly stored or saved on you computer. If the files that you have received is infected with virus, like what was said earlier, it will affect or infect the other files regardless of its status whether it is infected or not. So if you are to download, receive or accept, even install programs or software on your computer, observe precautionary measures to prevent computer virus that may blocked your access to the files that had been infected.
Over the years, computer viruses have evolved a great deal. Back in the 60’s, some programmers developed a game that can replicate every time it as run. It can even drain another computer’s memory. This game was called the Core Wars. To remedy what this game can do, those who created this game developed an application that could destroy copies replicated by the Core Wars. The application was named Reeper and came to be known as the first virus in the history. Also in that decade, the MS-DOS is fast becoming the top operating system worldwide. But young as it is, the the system was not developed as it is known today, that is so it was an easy target for virus then. That started the births of different viruses.
