Respond to two students

Student 1:

In this tutorial, the narrator gives more insight regarding miner viruses, and in this case, a bitcoin miner virus. This virus software often illegally mine information from an individual’s computer without their knowledge and authorization. They often consume much of the computer’s processor and hardware, leading to computer stuttering or functioning slower than normal i.e. increased processor allocation to a given task, increased fan rate, and other irregularities in the computer system. However, the narrator explained approaches that can be used to detect, kill the process, and remove these mining viruses from the computer. These include using the windows defender or other antiviruses that have an up-to-date virus database so that they can be able to detect and remove the virus.

The presenter used the process manager in the task manager to identify those applications and tasks that consumed a higher than usual percentage of the processor. These unknown tasks consumed more portion of the processor and hardware thereby affecting the efficiency of other processes that were running on the computer. This assisted in recognizing tasks that appeared to be of high risk and posing danger to the computer system in general. Sometimes, these viruses can manifest in the computer such that they cannot be recognized by antiviruses in the computer and could even cause the task manager not open or be listed in the task manager as running processes. The narrator went ahead to explain the steps to take to detect these viruses that are well hidden in the system so that they cannot escape the attention or recognition of the user and thereby continue to illegally mine data. He also suggested methods of preventing a user from downloading this malware unknowingly, through inspecting the authenticity of a server of app before downloading as well as enabling ad blocks in a user’s browser to prevent such viruses from mining data online.

Student 2 :

This video shows us that while virus creators can be clever with their viruses, pulling a number of dirty tricks to keep them hidden, if you know what you are doing, and what you are looking for, you can effectively fight them off using the systems process manager.

The video relates to process managers because it shows us how they can be powerful tools for finding and fighting viruses. The Windows task manager, which was shown in the video, has several useful features that can be used for this purpose, such as a task manager, system monitor, and startup manager. These resources make the task manager, and process managers in general, a very useful tool.

The video shows us many ways that the process manager can be used to find and end viruses on your computer (with the virus in the video being a hidden mining virus). In the video, we are shown how you can use the performance monitor in the task manager to judge whether certain viruses are active on your computer by monitoring CPU and GPU usage. In this case, high CPU and GPU usage were signs of a mining virus. You can also use the processes task of the task manager to see what processes are running on your system and end them should you desire. Likewise, we are also shown how the details tab can be used to see who or what launched the process and allows you to easily search certain processes up online for more information.