Abbreviation of virus

Answer 1

The word "virus" comes from Latin meaning "poison". A virus is capable of inducing the host cell to reproduce copies that infect other cells, thereby causing a disease. Viruses do not qualify as living organisms if for no other reason than they do not have a metabolism. They are little more than a packet of RNA or DNA that can attach to a target surface and inject their destructive instructions into a cell.

By analogy, malicious computer code was termed "virus" because it behaves the same way. It isn't alive but it can cause an infected computer to make copies of itself that can infect other computers.

There is no indication that the word "VIRUS", as applied to malicious computer code, had its origin as an acronym.

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Answer 2

Usually, the word "virus" itself isn't abbreviated, but you may see a number of abbreviations used in their names. One example is W32 or Win32, commonly used by antivirus companies in naming viruses designed to run on 32-bit Windows, which includes operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 2000. Some antivirus companies use more specific ones; McAfee, for instance, adds "@mm" to the ends of the names of viruses and worms which mail themselves to addresses in a user's Outlook address book, for example (the "mm" stands for "mass mailer"). Many antivirus companies add "-gen" or ".gen" to the names of viruses detected as following the generic format of a virus in a certain group.