BRIEF ABOUT TROJAN HORSE

Let’s get a brief of Trojan, whether it’s a virus or malware and how to protect it using an antivirus

About Trojans

Beware of Greeks who bring gifts

In Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, a clever Greek military strategist named Ulysses devises a plan for his men to enter the walled city of Troy. Instead of destroying or scaling the city walls, Ulysses sees another way to enter: with a deception. Trojan soldiers watch as the Greeks appear to leave, leaving behind a giant wooden horse in surrender. Drunk after victory, the Trojans drive the horse into the walled city, only to discover that Odysseus and his men had been hiding inside the entire time.

Like their namesake, Trojan horse attacks, or simply Trojans, use deception and social engineering to trick unsuspecting users into running seemingly harmless programs that conceal a malicious payload.

How to Distinguish a Trojan

People sometimes think of a Trojan as a virus or a worm, but in reality it is neither. A virus infects files that can replicate itself and spread by attaching itself to another program. Worms are a type of malware similar to viruses, but they do not need to attach to another program to spread. Most viruses are now seen as inherited threats from the past. Worms have also become more rare, although they do appear from time to time.

Consider Trojans as a general term for various ways of spreading malware, as there are several types of Trojans. Depending on the intent of the criminal programmer, a Trojan can be like a hack knife, acting as a standalone malware, or as a tool for other activities, such as spreading future payloads, communicating with the hacker later, or opening the system to attacks as the Greek soldiers did from within the fortified Troy.

In other words, a Trojan is a propagation strategy used by hackers to deliver a series of threats, from ransomware that demands money immediately, to spyware that hides while stealing confidential information such as personal and financial data.

Remember that adware or potentially unwanted programs (PUPs or potentially unwanted programs) can be confused with Trojans because their propagation method is similar. For example, adware sometimes sneaks onto your computer as part of a software package. You think you are downloading one piece of software, but actually it is two or three. The program authors typically include adware for partner marketing reasons, so that they can earn money from its installer through generally clearly identified offers. Such adware packages are generally less malicious than Trojans. Also, they are not hidden like Trojans do. But since the adware delivery vector resembles that of a Trojan, it can cause confusion.

Trojan Infection Methods

Trojans can present themselves in any form, from free software and music, to seemingly legitimate applications and browser ads. Various reckless behaviors of users can lead to the infection of a Trojan. These are some examples:

Download manipulated applications: The promise of a free illegal copy of software can be tempting, but unprotected software or a faulty activation key generator can hide a Trojan attack.

Download unknown freeware: What looks like a free game or screensaver may actually be a Trojan, especially if you find it on an unreliable site.

Open infected attachments: You receive a strange email with what looks like an important attachment such as an invoice or delivery confirmation, but it launches a Trojan when you click on it.

Visiting questionable websites: Some sites only take a moment to infect your computer. Others use tricks like pretending to stream a popular movie, but only if you download a certain video codec, which is actually a Trojan.

Any other social engineering that is hidden taking advantage of the latest trends. For example, in December, a large installed base of Intel processors was found to be vulnerable to attack due to certain hardware errors. Hackers took advantage of the ensuing panic by forging a patch called Smoke Loader, which installed a Trojan.

All these threats and unwanted files that are being downloaded in our system can be stopped using an updated antivirus and keep you secure from all the crimes and informational data leakage.