The Workings of Trojan Horse Viruses
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Abstract
Since the beginning of computer security one form of malware has always been a thorn in everyone’s side, it is one of the oldest and most commonly misunderstood malware and people hardly ever see it coming. It is the Trojan horse; a piece of programming code disguised as another program or file. This paper discusses how Trojans function, the damage Trojans cause and how Trojans can be prevented.
The Workings of Trojan Horse Viruses
What is a Trojan Horse Virus? Computer Trojans emerged in the mid-1980’s as a way to infect software and distribute the infected payload to different systems without raising suspicion. Trojans are not like viruses or worms per se, Trojans are malicious and cause damage but they are not self-replicating and don’t reproduce by infecting other files. Hackers have taken advantage of human nature with persuading the user to install a Trojan for the hacker by means of deception (Greenberg, 2011). Trojans Spread by users, the Trojan is latched onto an enticing program like a popular game, screen saver or any other program the user finds legitimate. Trojans usually open a covert backdoor into a targets computer or server, once installed the Trojan gives a hacker access to man operations including: Data theft, crashing the victim’s system, installing key loggers, and viewing the user’s screen (Greenberg, 2011). The Trojan must accomplish without raising suspicion, this is usually achieved by giving the Trojan program the name of a program the user uses commonly. Once this decoy program is launched the user will not have a clue the Trojan is installing because the normal program will work as intended (Sawicki, 1995).
What is the Goal of a Trojan? There are many reasons why a