"Attack is the best form of defense."
Carl von Clausewitz (1780 1831)

In the previous part of the book, we reviewed the theoretical fundamentals of computer virology and then defined more precisely its terms and concepts. Our purpose is now to address more practical and technical aspects of computer viruses, and to analyze the fundamentals of computer virology algorithmics, independently from any specific platform, language or operating system.

As a consequence, we will follow a different approach from that chosen by the too scarce existing technical handbooks which usually deal with viral technologies and whose material is mainly source codes. Mostly, these books only focus on source codes written in assembly language. The main drawback is that this kind of language is strongly dependent on processor architecture. Some of these books present viruses written in rather "exotic" languages or very dependent on specific applications like VBA or VBScript , but unfortunately, the algorithmic aspect is hardly ever analysed and clearly defined.

Another drawback is that assembly languages (or any other "exotic language") are often very complex and hermetic, and consequently the reader will be rapidly bored and discouraged. As for persevering readers, they are likely to get bogged down in details and undoubtely will not be able to get the proper view that is necessary in understanding properly the philosophy behind viral codes and other malware.

As viral...