::What Is Trojan Virus

By: Admin on 02:34

Sometimes you may see a file name Trojan in your computer, it's kinda like a virus. A Trojan virus is a piece of software designed to look like a useful file or software program but performs a possibly nefarious function once installed on a client computer. The virus takes its name from the “Trojan Horse” from Greek mythology setup outside of the city of Troy. Trojan horse viruses differ from other computer viruses in that they are not designed to spread themselves. Instead Trojan horse malware is either delivered as the payload of another virus or piece of malware or through manual end-user action by downloading infected files or inserting infected drives into a computer. Once a computer is infected with a Trojan virus, the malware can be designed to steal end-user information, perform destructive harm on the target computer, or even download additional computer malware. Trojan horse viruses comprised more than 80% of all computer malware detected in the world over the past year and the number continues to grow.

What Type of Damage Can Trojan Viruses Do?

Typically a Trojan virus will be designed to provide some form of remote access to a hacker or criminal on an infected computer. Once the Trojan virus has been installed the hacker will be able to perform tasks on the computer based on the user’s account privilege level. Some of these actions could be: to steal the user’s login and password data, credit card information, or bank account data; using the computer to conduct a denial-of-service attack against another user, company, or organization; installing other software to include additional computer malware; download or upload files on the user’s computer, log keystrokes or take screen captures of sensitive websites; crash the user’s computer; and to web surf in an anonymous fashion. Hackers do not have to directly distribute Trojan viruses; however, as many of the better known malware is designed to infect a computing system and respond to remote commands from hackers who did not originally deploy the malware. The hacker can conduct a scan of computers on a target network and once finding computer’s infected with the desired Trojan virus issue follow-on commands to control the computer.