What is a Trojan?
A trojan (from the Greek Trojan Horse), is a hidden program thatmonitors your key-strokes and then either copies them to a secretfolder for later recovery or ftp’s them to a server when you next goonline. This may be done without your knowledge. Such a trojan maybe secretly placed on your computer or picked up on your travels on theNet. It might be sent by someone hacking into your computer whilst youare online.The United States Government has openly admitted it will be employingsuch techniques. They call it Magic Lantern. It was originallypromulgated as a counter-terrorism weapon. But who knows how it willbe used in practice.To be political for a moment; the problem we all have to suffer is thatas Governments gain ever more power, the ordinary John Doe has less andless control over his life.
A Trojan is a file that pretends to be something legitimate on your computer. Once it is run it can destroy or leak your personal files to an outside source. Unlike a virus these cannot replicate or run themselves. Normally you can become infected through opening an infected email attachment or downloading an infected file from floppy disk, CD or the Internet.
A trojan is a program installed on computers usually without the owners permission or knowledge and are used to gain access by unauthorised people to the computer. Trojans appear to be safe, but they often hide malicious computer code that can spread a virus or worm. Trojans can sit harmlessly on a computer until the hacker activates it and gains access.
