Once this happens, these elements will become infected. A virus needs human intervention to run and it can copy itself into other computer programs, data files, or in certain sections of your computer, such as the boot sector of the hard drive. Viruses can be defined as follows: A computer virus is a type of malicious software capable of self-replication. This type of ill-intentioned software can disrupt normal computer operations, harvest confidential information, obtain unauthorized access to computer systems, display unwanted advertising and more. Malware is the umbrella that accommodates all these terms, as we also mention in our Cybersecurity Glossary : This is a short version for “malicious software” and it works as an umbrella term that refers to software that is defined by malicious intent.

Understanding what the terms virus, worm and malware refer to is the perfect starting point for understanding how the Crypto Virus (and other ransomware) works, so let us have a closer look.

A few months ago, my colleague Bianca Soare wrote a very comprehensive article on what virus and worm mean.

What does crypto locker do