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The computer has come a long way to become one of the most powerful machines in the world. From a simple calculation machine to a multipurpose machine, it has earned our respect for being fast, accurate and reliable. Today, we use the computer for almost every task or routine. We use it everywhere and we are highly dependence on them. Moreover, computer users now can connect with each other around the world with the Internet. Therefore, the information that we kept in them must be highly protected and secure from getting corrupted or lost. And with the global connection, the computer is more vulnerable to security threats such as software sabotage (viruses, Trojan horses and worms), hackers, interception of e-mails, and invasion of privacy. Below, we will state some types of prevention measure to take while on the Internet. Here, we take a look at the types of security threats, which can be transmitted through the Internet. The first threat would be the sabotage of hardware or software such as virus, Trojan horse, worm. A computer virus is ‘a program that attaches itself to a file, reproduces itself, and spread to other files’(Parson and Oja, 2000, p.396)1. The effect of the virus can range from harmless message, corruption of data and files and even disruption of computer operation. Computer virus commonly infect those executed program file with .exe extension, system files that is use to boot up the computer and also macro files that are use to automate task in the word processing and spreadsheet application. When the infected file is executed, the instruction of the virus is also executed. Trojan horse is another type of software sabotage. A Trojan horse is ‘a computer program that appear to perform one function while actually doing something else’(Parson and Oja, 2000, p.399)2. Trojan horse is not a virus but it may be carrying a virus with it. It also does not reproduce itself. Another variety of Trojan horse is that it can store information of a user login name and password and then pass it to unauthorized user. ‘A software worm is a program designed to enter a computer system, usually a network, through security holes. Like a virus, a worm reproduces itself. Unlike a virus, a worm does not need to be attached to a document or executable program to reproduce.’ (Parson and Oja, 2000, p.401)3.
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