Avoiding Trojan Horse Infections

The technological Trojan infections are named for its counterpart in Greek mythology. The Greeks won the Trojan War through the dubious means of the Trojan Horse ? a huge wooden horse given as a gift, which, unknown to the Trojans, was full of Greek soldiers who attacked and destroyed Troy at night, when the city was asleep. This is what it does to your computer, too ? it insinuates its way in through seemingly innocuous means, and then destroys your data.

The first Trojan attack in computing was found in 2002 ? it had infected SendMail and OpenSSH packages. A hacker had broken into the websites that did the distribution and switched the original, harmless files with the ones with the Trojan. This incident pointed out that it is very easy to get your computer infected through downloads. Now users try to tackle it by using the most sophisticated malware scanners before installing anything.

You can also get your computer infected with a Trojan through emails, shared files and instant messenger programs. After all, we are all curious, and an interesting file is very tempting. It is easy to get rid of Trojan Horses without activating them, though ? the Trojan Horse will only be activated if you try to do anything on the file. Removing it as it is will get rid of it.

Strictly speaking, a Trojan is not a virus. Viruses are known to replicate themselves and spread through infection within a single system and eventually spread to connected systems. Trojan Horses rely on end-users to spread around. Trojan Horses are not always malicious, although the majority are. They are best known to be back-door programs, which means they allow another person to bypass authentication to a computer and remotely access it for their own use, while remaining undetected.

As of now, Trojans are classified into six types ? downloader, denial-of-service attack, remote access, security software disabler, server Trojan and data destruction. They are named according to the kind of actions they take. This can range from corrupting your files, overwriting your data, ,encrypting your files, allowing unauthorized access to your computer from remote location and stealing private data to harvesting any email addresses on your computer, spying on you, interfering with your programs and shutting down your system.

You might not be able to detect a Trojan easily, but your malware scanner and anti-virus programs ought to be able to detect and remove it. If you can?t, the Trojan might be a leech on a necessary and legitimate file. If this is so, you might have to boot your computer in the safe mode, and you ought to be able to get rid of it with relative ease.

To avoid infection by a Trojan Horse, the wisest thing to do is to never open files you have no reason to trust and to be very careful of what you download ? always scan before opening. Your malware scanners should always be updated scrupulously ? then they can get rid of any malware that might get into your computer.