In the biological world, viruses are often spread by being passed from one lifeform to another, through shaking hands or sharing of implements such as eating utensils. And just as bio-viruses penetrate best through a portal in the body (mouths, eyes, etc...) so too with computer viruses. For computers not on the web, a virus may enter a floppy disk drive on a contaminated disk, while for web-users, the virus may enter another way.
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So how do viruses get spread over a network like the World Wide Web? Although contaminated floppy disks may also present a major hazard in this regard, it seems that the potential for rampant spreading of computer 'bugs' (not the conventional meaning, which is software glitches) is much greater when a virus can be resident on a central server accessible by essentially the entire world.
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Even an intranet (a company's own private network) poses a hazard should it be infected. Of course, there are more different viruses than you could shake a stick at, and their method for spreading is correspondingly different also. Email has been a reported source of virus infestation, and the most popular software makes the biggest target for malicious virus infestation.
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