What is a Trojan Horse Virus?

Simple Guide to Trojan Horse Viruses

Well the traditional term goes back to the days of ancient Greece in the classic fable of Helen of Troy. The Greeks had been trying to get in to Troy for rather a long while without any appreciable success, the place was an impenetrable fortress after all. So they decided to get sneaky. The Greeks built a large wooden horse and offered it up to the people of troy (Trojans) as a gift. At the same time they appeared to abandon there fight with the people of Troy and pulled their troops back from the fortress.

The Trojans brought the horse in to the city and promptly started to celebrate their victory. By nightfall the whole city was in a drunken uproar. They celebrated far into the night. In the small hours of the morning, while everyone was drunk or asleep, the Greeks unsealed the belly of the horse, and climbed down from it. Silently, they killed the Trojan sentries at all the city gates. The gates were then opened to the bulk of the Greek army, who had returned under the cover of darkness and unnoticed by the celebrating and drunken Trojans.

The Greeks had finally managed to get their army inside the city using deception, after ten years of trying to gain entry by force of arms. They then proceeded to slaughter the men and boys, keeping the women to be sold as slaves. By daybreak Troy belonged to the Greek army with it's populace either dead or in chains.

Here endeth the brief history lesson. ;)

What is a trojan horse virus?

[Other terms used for Trojans include back door virus, trojan worm, and computer worm]

In today's electronic world, a Trojan Horse hasn't changed much. It generally appears as an email attachment that is sent to you in the disguise of something useful or funny. It might look like a joke, a screensaver, a picture, even a document from a friend, much the same as a virus. Every time you execute a program that appears as an attachment, you are opening yourself to the possibility of exposing yourself to a Trojan horse exactly like the city of Troy. A Trojan horse is actually a program that will run and install itself when you open the attachment.

Once this Trojan horse has been introduced to your computer, the effects could be endless. Since each creator may have a different objective, you can never know what to expect. The Trojan could be a program designed to vandalize your software and data or it could be a program that grants the outside world access to your computer, all of its data and use of your Internet connection. A Trojan can harvest account numbers and passwords from the data on your computer. A Trojan can let the creator assume the identity of your computer.

Picture this:

You get a knock on the door from the FBI and they accuse you of computer hacking and seize your computer. In reality, someone used a Trojan horse to launch viruses and hack other computers by actually using your computer and your connection. Sound like fantasy? Ask a gentleman from Oregon that it happened to last year, I doubt he was happy having his entire computer seized and studied by the FBI.

Avoidance.

So how do you avoid getting a Trojan Horse? Good anti trojan virus protection software. There are many shareware programs and commercial programs that protect from Trojans.

Click here for our review of Pest Patrol

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