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What are Worms and Viruses worm vs virus VIRUS It is a program designed to change the way your computer operates without your permission or knowledge. When a virus attaches itself to another file, it infects it. Any time you activate an infected file it can damage files, cause erratic system behavior, or display messages. Some system viruses are programmed specifically to corrupt programs, delete files, or erase your disk. Viruses are inactive until you run an infected program, start your computer from a disk with infected system files, or open an infected file. Once a virus is active in memory it can infect any other programs, local or network, that you run. Files infected with a virus can be inoculated (the virus is removed from the program). WORM Worms are a close cousin to viruses and Trojan Horses. Unlike a virus they don't infect other programs. They do however make many copies of themselves in memory, which effectively consumes all your memory. This leaves no memory to run