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At some point in your education, a teacher probably spoke about the legend of the Trojan horse.  The Greeks left a large wooden horse outside the gates during the siege on Troy.  It was meant to be a peace offering, but actually, once the horse was brought into the city walls, it was found to be filled with Greek soldiers who quickly took over the city.

From that legend, Trojan horse viruses got their name.   While a program or file may look innocent enough, it actually contains a virus just waiting to attack your computer.  It either destroys information or installs spyware to track your movement or personal information.

While most computer professional refer to the Trojan horse as a computer virus, it is not a virus in the true sense that it does not replicate itself.  However, it is designed to take control on your computer system, just as the Greek soldiers took control of the city.

Many Trojan horses are designed to monitor your computer usage and steal, without your knowledge, any information it can from what you do which is also known as Identity Theft.  Because of this, it is considered a form of spyware.

This can be used to deliver unwanted pop-ups to your computer, based on the web sites you visit as well as collect your personal information, such as credit card numbers and password.  It may even change your web home page to a site they want you to see.  In fact, many web site owners pay spyware creators to do that so they get traffic on their site.

Trojans are also used to install what is called a backdoor.  A backdoor gives a hacker an access point to your computer.  Once they have gained control, they can then send spam or do damage to your computer – all unbeknownst to you.

Trojan horses are hidden in programs that seem useful.  You may find a free utility that seems like something you need, download it, and then run it and it actually infects your computer.  Trojans can also be spread through email attachments.  If you receive an email attachment that contains an executable file and download it, the Trojan horse will infect your computer when you run the file.  How do you know if it is an executable file attachment?  Executable files have an extension of .exe.  Don’t mistake these for text files – they are actually programs.

Newer Trojan horses can be embedded in image files.  A good rule of thumb is to never open a file from someone you don’t know, whether it is text, an image, or an executable file.  Even if it is from someone you know, but nothing you expected to receive from them,, don’t download it.  It may be a hacker sending things from their computer or they may unknowingly be sending you an infected file.

One of the better known Trojan horses is Sub7.  It claims to be a legitimate piece of software used to remotely control your person computer, but it can also be used to steal personal information such as credit card numbers.

Because it has been in the news, most computer users are aware of the fact that they need some type of antivirus software on their computer.  However, you may use software and hardware that resides outside your personal computer.  Things like email programs, file transfer protocol (FTP) services, web pages and other services are tied to other computers, known as servers.  What can be done to protect those servers from virus attacks?

Computer viruses can attack all computers on a network(including your home network if you have one), from your personal computer to a server that assists the entire organization.  A server is basically the same as a personal computer, but because it serves more people, it has more memory, disk space, and processors to carry the workload.  There are normally email servers dedicated solely to sending and receiving email.  Most web pages are served on exclusive servers that only deal with web traffic of those pages.  Some places, if they share quite a few files with others, may even have a server dedicated only to file transfers.

These servers basically work just like your personal computer, so that means they are subject to attacks of viruses and other malware generated by hackers.  It is just as important – if no more so – that they be protected against attacks.  If a server receives a virus, it may affect anyone who connects to it, not just one individual. 

Most servers have antivirus software installed to protect against an attack.  Most also have a firewall, which protects the server from entry points that are vulnerable to hackers.  But what else can be done? (more…)

You know the dangers of viruses and malware for your computer.  You take the precautions to protect yourself against harm and you may think that your computer is the only device you own that is susceptible to viruses and malware, but think again!  There are other routes hackers can use to infect you and that is through your cell phone, PDAs and other mobile devices.

Think about it – what is your PDA and phone other than just small computers?  And they are on one of the largest networks in the world, open to people all around the globe.  Just because it does not use Windows does not mean it does not have an operating system and applications just like your computer. Most cell phones and PDAs are traditional harder to break into because most have operating systems and applications burned into a chip.  However, there are many new services, such as downloading music and image files that are opening up your devices to potential hazards.

Viruses can live in any type of file.  Therefore, if you download an .jpg file to your cell phone, then later decide to upload that same .jpg file to your computer, you could be infecting your computer with that file you downloaded on your cell phone.  This is how PCs were originally infected with viruses – through users sharing files via a floppy disk.  If your phone is not secured, you could be putting yourself at risk. (more…)

There are three types of malware – that is, malicious software designed to harm your computer:  viruses, Trojans and worms.  Of the three, worms are the most harmful because they can function without human intervention.  While viruses attach themselves to a program, worms do not need to do that to be harmful.  They can spread independently.

Worms can be designed to destroy computer programs and files, but they are often designed to attack networks.  Because networks are comprised of servers and routers, this can be most damaging.  The servers are used as resources by many individual computers and the router is a specialized server that is used to route network traffic.  If nothing else, a worm can cause damage by consuming precious network bandwidth. (more…)

I received an email from what I will call one of my junk email accounts that appeared to have come from Dell Customer Care.  The email contained what appeared to be an order confirmation for a Sony Vaio?? I Did not know I could even by a Sony from Dell, but that doesn’t matter.

The email contained a zip file attachment that was supposed to contain a PDF of my order.  Since my computer is heavily protected, my curiousity was peaked, so I decided to open up the zip file.  Guess what, my EZTrust Anti-Virus program alerted me than the email contained a virus named: Win32/Hasdoor.BQ.  Can’t really tell you that I was shocked.

This just enfources the need to be real careful with opening up email attachments especially if something doesn’t seem right.  Most Internet Service Providers allow you to create multiple email accounts and we highly recommend that you create an extra one just to use when needed on sites that are looking for an email address.  This helps to prevent your main one from getting a ton of crap email messages.