Monday, November 30, 2009

Day 24: Trojan Horse

What is a trojan horse!!!!
No... its not what was used to hold soldiers ha ha ha


A trojan horse is a program that appeares to be ligitimate but in fact does something malicious. This often involves gaining remote, surreptitious access to a user's system - it does nto replicate nor does it make copies of itself. A trojan horse is also simplified to simply be called a trojan and it appears to perform a desirable function for the user but actually breaks inot the computer system. This was taken from Greek Mythology when soldiers were hidden and disguised as a gift but actually a tactic to take ever. They allow a hacker access to a computer system and some of the operations which a trojan may perform include the following:
  • use of a machine as part of a botnet - to perform spamming or denial of service attacks
  • data theft (credit cards and passwords)
  • installation fo software and other 'seemingly friendly' viruses
  • modification or deletion of files
  • downloading or uploading of files
  • keystroke logging
  • viewing the user's screen
  • wasting computer storage space

They need a hacker to actually complete their task and the method of installation is as follows:

  • software downloads (such as a program for watching tv on the computer)
  • websites containing executable content
  • email attachments
  • application exploits

So how do you remove a trojan horse?

  • one must install antivirus software to delete the trojan
  • this also prevents them from being installed again
  • it is advisable (where the security of the computer is critical) to erase all data from the hard disk and reinstall the operating system and required software

http://antivirus.about.com/b/2006/06/31/whats-a-trojan-horse-virus.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)

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