By
Oushee Ouseph
Submitted On July 25, 2014
I am sure many among us have heard of them, and the first thing
that comes to our minds when we hear them, is about some kind of
malicious activity. Trojans are often misunderstood as viruses or
malware, but the fact is they are quite different.
When I began the search on Trojans, I wondered on why they are called Trojans. I was very curious about the nomenclature followed for such malicious stuff. And that's when I came to know a very interesting piece of information, which talked about the fact that there is ancient Greek fable, wherein a huge man-made horse was presented to their enemies during a fight, symbolising peace, and when the enemy group, neared the Greeks fearlessly, the Greek soldiers emerged out of the horse, and defeated them. Trojans derive their name from this legendary Trojan horse, which had been portrayed as a token of peace but turned out to be a concoction of fraud and trickery, ultimately leading the city of Troy to its doom. In a similar fashion, Trojans present themselves as innocent little pieces of code, but once placed into your system, they cause mayhem.
Most often it's seen that Trojans are used as a gateway to even more severe issues, like converting the entire system into a Bot. One of the primary differences between viruses and Trojans is that, Trojans can't spread by themselves; they need a carrier like mails, attachments, or a malicious webpage.
Trojans are found to enter the system basically through downloads, and if it's through a web page, then it utilises browser based vulnerabilities to install itself. Once downloaded, Trojans which are executable files (like "exe", "vbs", "com", "bat", etc.) in general scenarios, unleash hazardous programs, that may then start a different malicious activity like looking for ways to infect other systems, or erase useful data, or copy and share sensitive data, and so on. Trojans can come in form of anything users find useful/desirable, such as free music, video, wallpapers, screensavers, movies, etc.
As said, in the beginning, Trojans don't make too much noise, instead they prefer hushed activities, which make them even more difficult to find. It's often seen that victims of Trojan attacks, come to know about them being victimised, when they are informed by their friends or other users who are being infected, by the victimised unknowingly. This is the most dangerous aspect of a Trojan, wherein as a victim you yourself are not the only victim, but you may end up infecting many other systems.
Few ways in which one can get rid of Trojans are by installing Anti-Virus/Trojan softwares or by cleaning your system by formatting it and re-installing the operating system. Although Windows OS is seen to be most vulnerable, even Mac OS and other operating systems like Linux are not safe. Staying alert and watchful is a very important and simple way of being safe.
When I began the search on Trojans, I wondered on why they are called Trojans. I was very curious about the nomenclature followed for such malicious stuff. And that's when I came to know a very interesting piece of information, which talked about the fact that there is ancient Greek fable, wherein a huge man-made horse was presented to their enemies during a fight, symbolising peace, and when the enemy group, neared the Greeks fearlessly, the Greek soldiers emerged out of the horse, and defeated them. Trojans derive their name from this legendary Trojan horse, which had been portrayed as a token of peace but turned out to be a concoction of fraud and trickery, ultimately leading the city of Troy to its doom. In a similar fashion, Trojans present themselves as innocent little pieces of code, but once placed into your system, they cause mayhem.
Most often it's seen that Trojans are used as a gateway to even more severe issues, like converting the entire system into a Bot. One of the primary differences between viruses and Trojans is that, Trojans can't spread by themselves; they need a carrier like mails, attachments, or a malicious webpage.
Trojans are found to enter the system basically through downloads, and if it's through a web page, then it utilises browser based vulnerabilities to install itself. Once downloaded, Trojans which are executable files (like "exe", "vbs", "com", "bat", etc.) in general scenarios, unleash hazardous programs, that may then start a different malicious activity like looking for ways to infect other systems, or erase useful data, or copy and share sensitive data, and so on. Trojans can come in form of anything users find useful/desirable, such as free music, video, wallpapers, screensavers, movies, etc.
As said, in the beginning, Trojans don't make too much noise, instead they prefer hushed activities, which make them even more difficult to find. It's often seen that victims of Trojan attacks, come to know about them being victimised, when they are informed by their friends or other users who are being infected, by the victimised unknowingly. This is the most dangerous aspect of a Trojan, wherein as a victim you yourself are not the only victim, but you may end up infecting many other systems.
Few ways in which one can get rid of Trojans are by installing Anti-Virus/Trojan softwares or by cleaning your system by formatting it and re-installing the operating system. Although Windows OS is seen to be most vulnerable, even Mac OS and other operating systems like Linux are not safe. Staying alert and watchful is a very important and simple way of being safe.
Talking about solutions, to such malware and virus attacks, Cyberoam Network Security appliances
offer comprehensive security to small, medium and large enterprises
through multiple security features integrated over a single platform. It
is the first UTM that embeds user identity in the firewall rule
matching criteria, offering instant visibility and proactive controls
over security breaches and eliminating dependence on IP Addresses. Its,
Layer 8 [Identity-based security] Technology platform makes security
simple, yet highly effective. Cyberoam, with its Extensible Security
Architecture (ESA) and multi-core technology carries the ability to
combat future threats for organizations' security. To read more about
Cyberoam and the solutions it offers, visit http://www.cyberoam.com
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