ROBERTS@decwrl.dec.com (George Roberts) (07/06/90)
Jerry J. Anderson writes: >Here are my definitions of virus, worm and Trojan horse: > > virus - a dependent self-replicating program. > > worm - an independent self-replicating program. > > Trojan horse - a program with a hidden agenda. > >By dependent, I mean that a virus "lives" within another program. > >I do not believe that the definition of a worm has anything to do with >networks. I think that association has risen due to the infamy of the >Internet worm. I agree with what you are saying, but is there a better way to word these definitions? What happened to the word "autonomous" instead of independent? autonomous - adjective: Independent; self-contained. - American Heritage dictionary. Here is my attempt at more accurate definitions: Virus - A section of code which has the ability to attach copies of itself to other programs in a manner which when these infected programs are executed, the virus code is executed as well as the original program. Worm - An autonomous program which has the ability to copy itself to a new physical location and then execute this new copy as a separate concurrent process. Trojan horse - an autonomous program with a hidden agenda disguised as a program to do something desirable. notes: 'program' may mean a set of integrated programs with a common purpose. 'new physical location' may or may not be on a different cpu. - -George Roberts .decwrl.dec.com!teda!ratvax.dnet!roberts