Retroviruses

The term “retrovirus” has several different unrelated meanings, including:

1.Malicious applications that try to disable, delete, or deactivate antivirus systems.

2.A computer virus that attempts to disinfect and repair files damaged by a different computer virus.

3.A computer virus attempts to run itself by exploiting vulnerabilities in the parser of the antivirus program, file compression program, or other program that reads the virus into memory.

Not to be confused with the phrase “retrovirus,” which could mean a modern computer virus that uses old techniques to replicate.