Internet Safety: Viruses

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Viruses, Trojans and Worms
3. Logic Bombs and Other Threats
   1. Virus Quiz 2
   2. Screen Savers
   3. Image Viruses
   4. Virus Quiz 3
   5. Macro Virus
   6. Resident Virus
   7. Virus Quiz 4
   8. Script Viruses (VBA, VBS, JS)
   9. Stealth Viruses
   10. Virus Quiz 5
   11. Mail Bombs
   12. Backdoors and Rootkits
   13. Virus Quiz 6
4. Example Viruses
5. Anti-Virus Software

Script Viruses (VBA, VBS, JS)

Like macro viruses, script viruses use programming languages present on your system to attack it. Indeed, most macro viruses are VBA viruses.

VBA is Visual Basic for Applications and is the language used by Microsoft for its applications like Word and Excel.

VBS is Visual Basic Script edition and is used for scripting in web applications like Internet Explorer. The worm ILoveYou was written in VBS.

JS is JavaScript, a variation on the Java programming language. Unlike the other script languages here JavaScript cannot itself be used to harm your system as it works in a "sandbox" or protected area of your computer. Instead, JavaScript is used to exploit security problems in other programs such as web browsers. This is known as a Browser exploit. An example of this would be the denial of service attack Spoon.

Next: Stealth Viruses