DEFINITION

A worm is a self-replicating computer program that resides in a computer’s active memory. A worm differs from a virus in that a worm is self-contained and can circulate itself without being part of another program, while a virus cannot. Worms will often delete files on a system or send malicious documents via email. Some worms replicate throughout the hard drives and memory, using up the computer's resources and eventually causing network failure.

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