How does Computer Worms work ?

People use e-mail more than any other application on the internet, but it can be a frustrating experience, with spam and especially e-mail worms filling our inboxes.

Worms can spread rapidly over computer networks, the traffic they create bringing those networks to a crawl. And worms can cause other damage, such as allowing unauthorized access to a computer network, or deleting or copying files.

So what exactly is a computer worm?

A computer worm is different from its other infamous sibling - the virus. A worm does not infect or manipulate files, it makes clones of itself. Therefore a worm is a standalone working program. It can use the system transmission capabilities to travel from machine to machine merrily riding around like a happy-go-lucky vagabond. A worm, after lodging itself on one machine can spawn several clones of itself. Each of these clones then marches forth to conquer the cyber world.

Author: Siddharth Bose