A Wisdom Archive on EXE

In computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. A computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of a virus into the program is termed as an infection, and the infected file (or executable code that is not part of a file) is called a host. Viruses are one of the several types of malicious software or malware. In ... Including:

• Computer virus - Definition
• Computer virus - Use of the word virus
• Computer virus - History
• Computer virus - Why people create computer viruses
• Computer virus - Replication Strategies
• Computer virus - Nonresident viruses
• Computer virus - Resident viruses
• Computer virus - Host types
• Computer virus - Methods to avoid detection
• Computer virus - Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts
• Computer virus - Stealth
• Computer virus - Self-modification
• Computer virus - Viruses and legitimate software
• Computer virus - The vulnerability of operating systems to viruses
• Computer virus - The role of software development
• Computer virus - Anti-virus software and other countermeasures

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A compiler is a computer program that translates a series of statements written in one computer language (called the source code) into a resulting output in another computer language (often called the object or class = "auto-link" href = "http://www.experiencefestival.com/compiler_-_history">Compiler - History

• Compiler - Native versus cross compiler
• Compiler - One-pass versus multi-pass compilers

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Though some believe that technologies used in .NET were originally developed by Microsoft as their version of the Java platform, the truth is that many of the teams working on .NET initially set out to create COM+ 2.5. Other departments were also improving other Microsoft technologies; the web server department was creating ASP 4.0 and the Microsoft distributed computing departments were creating what was called "Next-Generation Web Services". The work from the various departmen ...

Read more here: » Microsoft .NET: Encyclopedia II - Microsoft .NET - History

DOS Plus attempts to present the same command line interface as MS-DOS. Like MS-DOS, it has a command line interpreter called COMMAND.COM. There is an AUTOEXEC.BAT file, but no CONFIG.SYS. The major difference the user will notice is that the bottom line of the screen contains status information similar to: DDT86 ALARM UK8 PRN=LPT1 Num 10:17:30 The left-hand side of the status bar shows running processes. The leftmost one will be visible on the screen; the ...

Read more here: » DOS Plus: Encyclopedia II - DOS Plus - User interface

The .NET Framework was designed with several intentions: Interoperability - Because so many COM libraries have already been created, the .NET Framework provides methods for allowing interoperability between new code and existing libraries. Common Runtime Engine - Like the Java platform, programming languages on the .NET Framework compile into an intermediate language known as the Common Intermediate Language, or CIL; Microsoft's implementation of CIL is known as Microsoft Intermediate Language, or MSIL. Un ...

Read more here: » .NET Framework: Encyclopedia II - .NET Framework - Description

In order to avoid detection by users, some viruses employ different kinds of obfuscation. Some old viruses, especially on the MS-DOS platform, make sure that the "last modified" date of a host file stays the same when the file is infected by the virus. This approach does not fool anti-virus software, however. Some viruses can infect files without increasing their sizes or damaging the files. They accomplish this by overwriting unused areas of executable files. These are called cavity viruses. For example the CIH virus, or Chern ...

Read more here: » Computer virus: Encyclopedia II - Computer virus - Methods to avoid detection

Several experimental compilers were developed in the 1950s (see, for example, the seminal work by Grace Hopper on the A-0 language), but the FORTRAN team led by John Backus at IBM is generally credited as having introduced the first complete compiler, in 1957. COBOL was an early language to be compiled on multiple architectures, in 1960. [1] The idea of compilation quickly caught on, and most of the principles of compiler des ...

Read more here: » Compiler: Encyclopedia II - Compiler - History

Microsoft's .NET Framework has extended the PE format with features which support the Common Language Runtime (an implementation of the .NET Virtual Machine). Among the additions are a CLR Header and CLR Data section. Upon loading a binary, the OS loader yields execution to the CLR via a reference in the PE/COFF IMPORT table. The CLR VM then loads CLR Header and Data sections. The CLR Data section contains two important segments: Metadata and Intermediate Language (IL) code: Metadata contains information relevant to the a ...

Read more here: » Portable Executable: Encyclopedia II - Portable Executable - .NET metadata and the PE format

Dynamic-link library - Memory management. In Win32, the DLL files are organized into sections. Each section has its own set of attributes, such as being writable or read-only, executable (for code) or non-executable (for data), and so on. The code sections of a DLL are usually shared among all the processes that use the DLL; that is, they occupy a single place in physical memory, and do not take up space in the page file. If the physical memory occupied by a code section is to be reclaimed, its contents are discarded, and later ...

Read more here: » Dynamic-link library: Encyclopedia II - Dynamic-link library - Features

In the past, compilers were divided into many passes[1] to save space. A pass in this context is a run of the compiler through the source code of the program to be compiled, resulting in the building up of the internal data of the compiler (such as the evolving symbol table and other assisting data). When each pass is finished, the compiler can free the internal data space needed during that pass. This 'multipass' method of compiling was useful in the early days of computing due to the small main memories of host com ...

Read more here: » Compiler: Encyclopedia II - Compiler - Compiler design

The term "virus" was first used in an academic publication by Fred Cohen in his 1984 paper Experiments with Computer Viruses, where he credits Len Adleman with coining it. However, a 1972 science fiction novel by David Gerrold, When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One, includes a description of a fictional computer program called "VIRUS" that worked just like a virus (and was countered by a program called "ANTIBODY"); and John Brunner's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider describes programs known as "tapeworms" which spread through a networ ...

Read more here: » Computer virus: Encyclopedia II - Computer virus - Use of the word virus