The Trojan Horse Virus
One of the more infuriating modern-day scourges in society is computer-related theft and vandalism, especially when it comes in the form of a trojan horse virus. The criminal element which has always been present throughout all cultures in history has taken to the internet like a duck takes to water. The fact that people who have highly-marketable technical skills would choose to manifest them through senseless acts of petty theft reveals an ugly reality of human nature.
What is a Trojan Horse Virus?
No doubt by now you have some knowledge of computer viruses, and probably from first-hand experience. Sick, isn’t it? The computer virus that you have probably come to know is destructive in purpose. Once infected, you probably had to eventually reformat your PC or even buy a new computer. That type of computer virus has mass vandalism as its objective.
By contrast, a trojan horse virus usually has theft as its objective. It typically does not seek to destroy your computer; in fact it wants to live there. However very often the end result is that your PC becomes so bogged down from it that the same remedy is required (reinstalling windows or getting a new PC).
If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you can understand how this kind of virus gets its name. It is actually a type of spyware. It comes packaged as something else, and is often hidden within some other file that you download or access. Unfortunately trojan horses are so simple to create and deliver that they can be embedded in basic html pages. That means you can get one by simply visiting a web page or opening an email in unprotected html mode (people like to read emails this way so that they can see the images and text formatting).
Once it gets on your PC it will look to capture information that it can send back over the internet to the hacker. One of the more common methods is by logging your keystrokes to a file and then sending that file back to the perpetrator. However these days trojans can also get information from mouse clicks and even from spreadsheets that you open. Some can crawl files on your PC as well. The thief at the other end is usually seeking to get passwords to your financial accounts.
There is another popular purpose for trojan horse viruses, which is to enslave your computer. This is known as making it into a zombie. Once a hacker has a large network of zombie PC’s he will use them to attack websites that he is attempting to blackmail. The attack is done by having all the pc’s make multiple page requests over and over and over again quickly from hundreds of different locations at once. This is known as a denial of service attack, DOS for short, or a distributed denial of service attack, DDOS for short. It can cause the web server of the website being attacked to go down, and in the very least will make the pages load slowly. When your infected PC is being used in an attack it will respond slowly because it is busy trying to open lots of web pages quickly.
Trojan Horse Removal
As with all computer viruses, prevention is the best medicine. Be careful about what websites you visit, and do not read your emails in unprotected html mode. Obviously this safe-practices policy will fail at some point however, so having good security software on your PC is an absolute must. Fortunately good anti-virus software is free these days; I highly recommend the free version of Avast!
Unfortunately, no anti-virus software, no matter how good, is going to catch every trojan horse virus that is out there. As mentioned before they are such a simple script that creative ways of sneaking them past your security are constantly being invented. The security software is always one step behind. For that reason, having specialty software that targets spyware is also advisable.
One of the best that I have seen is called Spyware Cease. It does a good job of catching and removing trojans which regular anti-virus software misses. You can use it to run a free scan on your PC and if you decide to buy it, it has a 60-day unconditional refund policy if you decide you don’t need it (I can’t imagine that).
Battling trojan horse viruses is a reality of computer usage in the 21st century. It’s just something you need to do in order to protect your PC investment.
Papa Riah