Viruses get a lot of publicity, and it's easy to see why.
They have an ominous and mysterious aura. Computer viruses are simply small computer programs that have as their sole aim to do harm. They are written by disturbed people, the kind of sociopaths who place razor blades in apples at Halloween. Like human viruses, computer viruses can replicate, spreading from one computer to another through shared floppy disks, infected CD-ROM discs, or over the Internet. Computer viruses can't harm your hardware.