If you use computers or mobile then you must’ve heard about the term trojan horse so keep on reading as today I’ll be discussing about what is a trojan horse in computer & how it actually works. Also some of the issues related to it have also been encountered in mobile phones. I’ll be discussing about that as well & sharing few tips with which you can prevent such issues & strengthen your device’s security.
Nowadays there exist a lot of terms to define computer viruses which are termed as worms or Trojan that general users believe to be one & the same thing. However I have shared in one of my earlier articles that these are varieties of malwares & today I’ll be talking specifically about TROJAN HORSE. The term is originally derived from a very old greek mythology where the greeks after a 10 year fruitless siege against city of Troy built & used a huge deceptive horse made out of wood to carry out attack on the city. The horse was completely hollow from inside and around 40 greek soldiers hid inside it. The greeks then pretended to sail away and the horse carrying the soldiers was sent to Troy. The Trojans accepted & pulled in the horse to city as trophy of their victory. After the sun went down, the greek force crept out of the horse and opened gates for rest of the army which had sailed back in & destroyed the city, ending the war.
So basically the horse which initially just seemed to be a magnificent trophy and harmless turned out be quite opposite in real.
Now can you think of a similar situation related to your use of computers?
FAKE SOFTWARES!!!!
I am sure you encounter lot of annoying ads, popups when browsing through websites of low web reputation usually the ones that provide free music & movies/ software downloads. They come with various irritating alert like:
“YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE INFECTED”
“WARNING: Available memory left: 8% left On Your Android”
“ARE YOU TIRED OF THESE POPUPS YET?”
“YOUR SYSTEM MIGHT BE RUNNING SLOW” etc. and later introducing you to a whole new fake tool claiming to resolve the issue.
Along with that, the attackers also spam people with emails that have similar warnings to trick them into downloading their tools which could be a virus, a spyware, an adware or a Trojan Horse.
Now
What if you end up inviting a Trojan horse in your computer??
OR
How a Trojan Horse can affect your Computer?
At First Glance, the Trojan horse appears to be an useful software but shows its true colors once you run or install it your system. Usually the victims are tricked into running it because to them, it appears that they are just receiving a trusted or legitimate software from a reliable source.
Once you run such software on your system the results can vary as few Trojans are simply designed to be annoying rather than malicious.
You may get to see a different desktop background every time you boot your system, some silly set of icons OR unwanted popup windows when you use your web browser. On the other hand, the malicious ones can cause serious damage by deleting or leaking your important & confidential data without your permission. Similar to what happened in story, it derives it’s from; Trojans are also known to create backdoors & automatically download other malicious softwares to your system to make situation even worse for you.
It is also possible that the attacker who created the virus can gain remote access to your system and may use it as part of a botnet to attack other vulnerable devices.
How to Remove trojan horses?
- Avoid using cracked version of any software. Purchase & use genuine copies only.
- Always download all of your files from genuine sources/websites.
- Do not click on any link present in or download software that you came to know about through a spam email.
- Use a good antivirus software & firewall.
- Take regular backups of your data & store it at a secure place.
If in case your system does get infected by Trojan Horse then kindly refrain from using the internet. Run a scan on your entire system with an antivirus or format all of the data present as soon as possible.
