What is a Trojan Horse?

The Trojan Horse virus takes its name from the Giant wooden horse that was used to trick the defenders of troy into sneaking soldiers into their city to ultimately win a war. How the modern day trojan horse works is by hiding malware in, what seems to be, a normal file. There a wide variety of hundreds different trojans viruses that can do many different tasks. The majority of trojans are typically aimed at taking control of a users computer, stealing data and inserting even more malware onto the computer. This can lead to banking data being stolen and passwords accounts being stolen.

How does this affect me?

Trojans are classified according to the type of actions that they can perform on your computer:

Backdoor: A Backdoor Trojan gives malicious users remote control to the infected computer. This enables the hacker to do anything they want with the infected system. They can send and receive or launch and delete files remotely. The main use for a Backdoor Trojan is to unite a large amount of infected computers for criminal purposes.

Trojan-Ransom: This can modify any piece of data on your computer so that your computer doesn’t run correctly. The criminal will only restore your computers performance or unblock your data, after you have paid them the ransom that they demand you pay in bitcoin.

Trojan-sms: This common Trojan will send texts to premium rate phone numbers.

Trojan-Spy:  Trojan Spy programs can spy on how you use your computer without your knowledge. An example of this is that they can track data you enter from the keyboard, take screenshots without your knowledge or take a list of running applications.