Trojan horse
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Trojan horse



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DEFINITION - In computers, a Trojan horse is a program in which malicious or harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless programming or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on your hard disk. In one celebrated case, a Trojan horse was a program that was supposed to find and destroy computer viruses. A Trojan horse may be widely redistributed as part of a computer virus.

The term comes from Greek mythology about the Trojan War, as told in the Aeneid by Virgil and mentioned in the Odyssey by Homer. According to legend, the Greeks presented the citizens of Troy with a large wooden horse in which they had secretly hidden their warriors. During the night, the warriors emerged from the wooden horse and overran the city.

Getting started with trojan horses
To explore how a Trojan horse might be used against an enterprise, here are some additional resources:
The essentials of malware defense: Prevent malicious access to your machines and systems. Learn the essentials of malware defense, including how to maintain network awareness and best practices for protecting the endpoint.
Protecting browsers from Web advertising attacks: Web browser security is a priority for all enterprises as administrators wor to keep browsers and servers secure. Get more information on Web advertising attacks, learn how hackers exploit websites and servers, and how to minimize the threat.
Ransomware: How to deal with advanced encryption algorithms: Want to avoid a ransomware threat? Learn how to handle advanced encryption algorithms and the best approaches to take when dealing with an attack.

CONTRIBUTORS: Santichai Dumpprasertkul
LAST UPDATED: 05 Oct 2008

Read more about Trojan horse:
- SearchSecurity.com is a portal to more information about security.
- IBM Research provides a collection of links to scientific papers about "Antivirus Research," including research about Trojan horses.
- "Learn IT: Viruses & Other Malware - Detection, Prevention, and Cure" has more information.


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