Introduction to Trojan Horse Virus
Cyber attacks have always been something very gainful for the attackers in many aspects since long back. With every day passes, it brings a new technique of attacking the system that belongs to organizations or enterprises in order to gain either the fame or to get the monetary benefit.
One side where hacking sounds very beneficial for the attackers, it comes with lots of risks and the malicious user must have to be cognizant about it to make it happen successfully. Here in this article, we will be going through an interesting topic which is usually preferred by the hacker to compromise the security of any system.
We will see things about trojan horse virus, how attackers leverage it and what are its consequences. So let’s get started!
What is Trojan Horse Virus?
- Trojan horse virus also called trojan may be defined as the malware which appears to be the legitimate or appropriate software and used by attackers to compromise the security of the system. There are several things that a trojan can do and one of its important features is, it remains in the user’s system secretly and does not let them find it.
- Till the time it is residing in the system, it can get the entire access of the system to the malicious user or the hacker and they will be able to do everything that a legitimate user can do. Reading the critical files, sending them to other systems, accessing the confidential data and so on are the few breaches that one can do after installing the trojan horse virus in the organization or enterprise system.
- Trojan horse viruses can also be considered as the kind of malicious software that can perform various activities in the system of legitimate users that can harm them in any way. Some Trojans are designed to steal bank details, some are designed to work with download and install other malicious softwares while some are developed to install adware and so on.
- In order to launch the Trojan attack, the users are tricked through social engineering to install the trojan virus and once it has been installed, it will create a backdoor for the hacker to access the system over and over. The system administrators are supposed to run the check very frequently to detect if any system is infected from the Trojan attack.
How does the Trojan Horse Virus Work?
- The trojan horse viruses are usually responsible for letting the hacker access the target system so that they can harm it take leverage of it either way. Based on the type of virus, it is capable of performing lots of unethical tasks that directly lead to security breaches. To understand how it works, we will consider an example of how it creates a backdoor for the hacker.
- It all begins with having the legitimate user tricked to install trojan into their system. Once the user is tricked and the virus has been downloaded in their system, it starts working. If the trojan is a backdoor trojan virus, it will lead to gain access to the user system to the attacker.
- The attacker will be able to make changes in any file, download and send any confidential data, will be able to delete the files and can perform all of the actions that the legitimate user can do. The hacker might be able to access the terminal or the command prompt based on the operating system of the affected system. The virus will work as long as it resides in the user’s system. Once it is detected by the admin, it can be removed to stop the hacker leveraging it.
Types of Trojan Horse Virus
Depending upon the purpose, the trojan virus is divided into several types. Below are a few of the common types of trojan horse virus.
- Backdoor trojan virus – The backdoor trojan virus is the malware that let the hackers access the legitimate users’ system without their knowledge. Once the user is tricked to install the trojan in their system, the hacker becomes able to perform all the activities that the user can do. The hacker can read the data, delete the files and forward the confidential documents by leveraging the backdoor trojan
- Rootkit trojan virus – The rootkit trojan virus is another kind of malware that conceals various activities in the system to protect the malware from getting detected. The main purpose behind the development of rootkit trojan is to get the malware some additional life in the system of the legitimate user so that the hacker and leverage the malware for a long
- Trojan-downloader – The trojan-downloader may be defined as a special kind of trojan virus that automatically downloads various kinds of trojans and adware. It also upgrades the already available malware in the system. It helps the attacker to get everything in the affected system that they can take benefit
- Trojan-banker – The trojan-banker may be defined as another kind of trojan horse virus that can steal the bank details of the user who used to access their bank account from the impacted system. The data related to bank like bank account number, CVV number, debit card details, credit card details and so on are the lucrative data that trojan-banker virus
Prevention and Conclusion
- The trojan horse virus is used by hackers to compromise the security of the system. It could be prevented by installing anti-malware applications in the system.
- There are lots of free and paid anti-malware softwares available in the market that protects the system from being impacted by the trojan or any other malware.
- It is very important to keep the system up to date so that the hacker cannot break the system to install the trojan through the existing vulnerabilities. Also, the paid version of the anti-malware software comes with a bundle of benefits that the free version lacks. So it is always preferred to go with the paid version as it ensures the security of the system or the organizations.
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