Has your computer seemed a little sluggish lately? Are some of your programs crashing or not running properly? That could be a red flag that a worm is eating up your processing power. When worms repeatedly replicate themselves, they start to use up the free space on your computer. Even if the scan comes up negative, continue to be proactive by following these steps. If you suspect your devices are infected with a computer worm, run a virus scan immediately. In addition to wreaking havoc on a computer’s resources, worms can also steal data, install a backdoor, and allow a hacker to gain control over a computer and its system settings.

Sometimes a computer worm’s purpose is only to make copies of itself over and over - depleting system resources, such as hard drive space or bandwidth, by overloading a shared network. Worms can modify and delete files, and they can even inject additional malicious software onto a computer. Once it’s installed, the worm silently goes to work and infects the machine without the user’s knowledge. Once opened, these files could provide a link to a malicious website or automatically download the computer worm. Or computer worms could arrive as attachments in spam emails or instant messages (IMs). Worms can be transmitted via software vulnerabilities.

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