Re: [PLUG] worms vs viruses

[Jon Galt <jongalt@pinn.net>]

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 Darxus@chaosreigns.com wrote:

> On 02/22, Jon Galt wrote:
> > By the way, what exactly is a worm anyway?  I believe a Trojan is a
> 
> A worm is a self propagating virus.  Instead of waiting for an opportunity
> to copy itself to another file, and then wait for that file to be
> transferred to another machine, it actively seaks out other machines that
> it can infect - generally through security holes in server software.  It
> scans a network for servers running a vulnerable server program, and uses
> an exploit to gain control of that server, installs itself on the new
> server, and then continues from the new server.

So the difference is that a worm is a special virus that knows how to
operate over networks?  Or...

We could say that a virus propagates to new programs (which may or may not
be copied to new computers), and a worm propagates to new computers on a
network over network connections....

Thanks,
Wayne


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