What is a Trojan Horse and how to safeguard a home computer from it?

What is a Trojan Horse?

The name Trojan horse or Trojan came from the famous war story between Troy and Greeks. In this war, the Greeks achieve great success through deceiving their enemy by sending a gift of a horse structure, that their enemy gladly receives and taken inside their city. However, it turns out that the structure hides some space containing some Greek soldiers who are ready to ambush their enemy and provide the Greeks a chance to win the war. Throughout the years there have been some adaptations for this event and the most recent Movie adaptation is “Troy” released in 2004.

Similarly, the modern-day Trojan horse employs the use of disguises to achieve its goals. A Trojan horse is a Malware and in its simplest form is a program that is specifically disguised as something else, preferably something that looks harmless or unnoticeable in order to get inside a computer or a network and achieve something. They are a type of tools utilized by hackers to cause problems to other people. If you somehow have also been a target of the hackers, you must approach a reliable cyber security expert like BITS.

What does Trojan Horse do?

Once it manages to gets inside a computer it can perform many types of attacks and most of them are usually meant to do some form of harm. Unlike the common misconception, Trojan Horse is actually classified as a Malware and not a computer virus. There are a few differences between the two but the most striking difference is that unlike computer virus, Trojans usually do not have the ability to self-replicate. To secure your home computer well, you are suggested to contact your local computer expert like “Computer Repair Onsite”. Some of the most common things hackers do include:

• Deleting data
• Modifying existing data to suit their purpose.
• Stealing sensitive information such as password, date of birth, credit card information, etc
• Granting access to hackers and allow them to cause many type of problems.

Trojan Horse can be divided into a few different types depending on their ability and the most common ones are:

Backdoor Trojan, which are capable to allow un-authorized user to have control over infected system and act as an authorized user to do many things such as  deleting, copying, sending, receiving files, etc.

Root kit, which allows hacker to hide malicious program inside another program to create backdoor access.

Trojan Bankers, which are designed to focus on stealing banking related information such as credit card details, password, etc.

Trojan Ransom, which allows the hacker to make your system unable to run properly and black mail you for money in exchange for returning access to your system.

Trojan-Spy, which works as a key logger to record all the key used on the keyboard and use them to collect data on the user.

DDoS Trojans, which are short for Distributed Denial of Service. This type of Trojan horse execute attack on your system by sending request from many different places throughout the system in order to make the system slow down or on in some cases goes out.

How do Trojan Horse Tricks people?

The most common cases of how a Trojan get into a system is when someone downloads a file from the internet such as a video, images, documents, or through an email attachment. These email and files might come from a new unknown source, seemingly legitimate source or even from your friends email address. One of the most famous forms of Trojan Horse attack is the “ILOVEYOU” scheme that sends an email attachment containing a file called “I love you” and when it was opened it will execute the program to access the address book and send a copy of the “ILOVEYOU” email to everyone inside the address book in order to spread itself. This form of attack is simple but it managed to spread itself to millions of users.

How to safeguard against the Trojan Horse?

Here are the steps that can be taken to avoid letting a Trojan Horse into your devices:

• The simplest form of protection is regular updates. Software companies are aware this problems and they are working to keep improving the safety of their program and regular updates ensure your devices are safe from new attacks.
• Another easy step that can be taken is to install security software, there are many products to choose from and most of them can guarantee the safety of your devices from Trojan Horse and other types of attacks. These products will scan your files and remove any Virus or Malware detected inside your devices to guarantee the safety of your devices. To purchase the security software, you can go to the website like X-Tech Buy.

• The most crucial step to protect your computer is to pay attention to the source of any files downloaded from the internet. Most browsers and security software will alert you regarding risky websites, and it is best to avoid these websites. It is also a good idea to avoid downloading video, images, programs, and other files from sites that are not well known and avoid opening emails from an unknown sender.
• Another thing you can pay attention to is the program installed in your system, if there are program installed that you do not recognize it might be a good idea to try and scan it through security software or uninstall it for better safety.