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Anti
Virus
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A
Trojan Horse is a type of Computer Virus
According
to legend, the Greeks won the Trojan war by hiding in a huge, hollow
wooden horse to sneak into the fortified city of Troy. In today's
computer world, a Trojan horse is defined as a "malicious,
security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign". For
example, you download what appears to be a movie or music file, and
when you click on it, you unleash a dangerous program that erases your
disk, sends your credit card numbers and passwords to a stranger, or
lets that stranger hijack your computer to commit illegal denial of
service attacks like those that have virtually crippled the DALnet IRC
network for months on end.
Unlike
a virus or a worm, trojans do not replicate themselves so to get
infected you must, one way or another, have downloaded the program onto
your computer. This most commonly occurs when you download a program
that pretends to be one thing while it is actually another. Hence the
origin of the "Trojan" name.
Many
people believe they are protected from trojans by a virus scanner.
Unfortunately most virus scanners have only limited trojan detection
capabilities. If you want serious protection you should
install a
specialized anti-trojan program in addition to your antivirus scanner.