Trojan Horse Software

Trojan Horse software appears to be beneficial but in fact is malicious. The term comes from the classic Greek story of the Trojan War (possibly 1194-1184 B. C.) In the guise of a peace offering the Greeks gave a giant wooden horse housing soldiers to their Trojan enemies. Once the unwitting Trojans dragged the horse inside their city walls, Greek soldiers snuck out of the horse's hollow belly and opened the city gates, allowing their fellow soldiers to pour in and capture Troy.

The screen saver waterfalls.scr is a classic example of Trojan Horse software. If you download it you may see an attractive waterfall after a requisite delay. But instead of saving your screen (in the old days a static image displayed too long on a computer monitor could burn a permanent ghost image) you’ll effectively give up control of your computer to a vicious program. We’ll see below some of the types of damage that Trojan Horse software can bring to your computer. Don’t do like the Trojans, don’t accept computer “gifts” unless you know the donor. Actually knowing your donor isn’t sufficient protection against Trojan Horses and other malicious programs. Your donor may honestly be unaware that the gift is poison. Furthermore, the true donor may masquerade as someone else; you think that the file was donated by your trusted friend Billie but was in fact supplied by that scoundrel Willie who pretended to be Billie.

Don't be like the Trojans, don't open your gates to invaders.

Not all Trojan Horses come from the Internet. Two other common sources are e-mail attachments and macros associated with Microsoft Office applications. Linux operating systems may offer some additional protection against this scourge compared to Microsoft Windows but don’t you ever believe that Linux systems cannot be attacked by Trojan Horses.

While some Trojan Horse programs are harmless, most are not. What are some of the things that Trojan Horse programs can do? Logging keystrokes to steal information such as passwords and credit card numbers. Installing computer viruses. Sending spam. Launching Denial of Service attacks in which the computer network is overwhelmed by the level of traffic. Displaying pornography. Erasing or overwriting computer data. Spying on your computer use. Re-installing itself after being disabled. Uploading and downloading unauthorized files. Enabling remote access to the computer. Phishing for account details. Encrypting your files. Using your modem to make expensive long-distance telephone calls. Disabling anti-virus programs. Shutting off your computer.

Digital Trojan Horse, as sneaky as in old Troy.

There is no magic solution to dealing with Trojan Horse programs but we can make a few suggestions. Don’t accept gift programs from unknown sources. Use a high-quality antivirus program that scans all files before adding them to your computer. If your antivirus program doesn’t deal with spyware, use a compatible anti-spyware program as well.