The main difference between a virus and a worm is that viruses must be triggered by their host, whereas worms are stand-alone hostile programs that may self-replicate and proliferate once within the system. Worms carry out and spread their programming without the need for activation of human activity. So here this article gives the difference between Virus Vs Worm to better understand this topic.
What is Worm?
Worm stands for write once, read many. Worms are comparable to viruses, however, they do not alter the software. It copies itself more and more, causing the computer system to showdown. Worms may be remotely controlled. Worms' primary goal is to consume system resources. In 2000, the wanna cry ransomware virus exploited the windows server message blocks protocol, which is a resource-sharing mechanism.
What is Virus?
Virus stands for, vital information resources under siege. A virus is a harmful executable code that is connected to another executable file and can be either innocuous or capable of modifying or deleting data. When a virus-infected computer application executes. It takes some action. Such as removing a file from the computer system. Viruses cannot be remotely manipulated.
Virus vs Worm | Difference between a virus and warm:
- Worms often propagate over a computer network, whereas viruses transmit by executable files from one machine to another.
- Viruses propagate at a far slower rate than worms. Worms spread at a much higher rate because they can duplicate themselves automatically.
- The viruses need hosts to propagate from one gadget to the next. Worms do not require a host.
- A worm is less harmful than comparing to a virus.
- Worms may copy themselves spontaneously to new systems, and viruses require human intervention to proliferate.
- Viruses are meant to damage, erase or change the data or software on the target device, while the worms do not harm the stored data but instead try to harm the resources.
- Example of a worm includes morris worm, storm worm, etc. Examples of viruses include creeper, blaster, slammer, etc.
- Viruses are located in executable files or can attach themselves to executable files in order to operate on target devices, whereas worms run independently in the memory of an infected device.
- Worms can be detected and removed by the antivirus and firewall, while the antivirus software is used for protection against viruses.
- Viruses often destroy and damage stored data, however, worms can disrupt the entire network by using all available resources. For instance, by using bandwidth, sending larges emails, or bulk deleting or transferring data.
- Worms are executed via a weakness in the system, and viruses are executed via executable files.
- Worms can be controlled by remote, but viruses can't be controlled by remote.
- Worm generally comes from downloaded files or through a network connection, and Viruses generally come from shared or downloaded files.
- Internet worms, instant messaging worms, email worms, file sharing worms, and Internet relay chat worms are different types of worms. Boot sector virus, direct action virus, polymorphic virus, macro virus, overwrite virus, and file infector virus is different types of viruses.