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Everthing Old is New Again: Trojan Horses

Trojan Horses - Anyone familiar with Greeek Mythology recognizes the tale of Troy and the Trojan Horse.
Basically, Trojan Horse programs were developed as bait to get people to do the hard work of spreading computer viruses. Just like their historical namesake, a vicious little package is placed in a trojan horse in order to conceal it from sight, the unsuspecting computer user intalls the program because it looks like it will help him/her or it looks cool or whatever. Once installed on the computer and safely inside the outside protection of the computer, the trojan dumps its cargo of computer viruses, worms, etc.

The Trojan Horse itself can be just about any program or utility. P2P file sharing programs like Kazaa and Limewire are some of the better known culprits and have been accused of installing spyware and browser highjackers since they were first introduced, If you look carefully through their End User License Agreement in fact it practically spells out that they fully intend to infect your computer with everything from pop up ads to browser spies to track your every move and click online.

There are other examples as well. Fake Spyware removal and Anti-Virus utilities and programs have been used as Trojan Horses as well as Fake Download Speed Boosters,

Usually the tell-tale clue that something may be a Trojan Horse program is the old saying about “if it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is”.

Any time you have a professional looking program that someone or some company has obviously spent a significant amount of time and money developing, yet they are not charging anything for it, it is usually a pretty good sign that the software could be a Trojan Horse.

For Example - You receive an email about new spyware prevention/removal program that is free to download and use, with no restrictions or trial period indicated. The company is basically just giving the software away. That is usually a good indicator that the program is a Trojan Horse.

The most imporant thing to remember about Trojan Horse programs is that by themselves they are not designed to harm computer systems themselves. They are the camouflage or disguise that ‘carries in’ the damaging malware. A Trojan Horse without a payload of either a virus, a logic bomb or spyware is just an empty suit of clothes.

Any time a company is spending money to develop a piece of software, yet doesn’t charge anything, should be a big warning sign that something may be too good to be true. The software company is making making money somewhere/somehow, they are just making it from a ’silent partner’ who is probably paying them to install spyware or some other form of malware into the program.

This way this silent partner can receive different types of information such as marketing information, free traffic driven to a specific site, advertising in the form of pop up windows, etc, and ‘that’ is how the software company is making their money.
Open-Source software seems to be the exception that proves this rule correct, by its very nature open source programs can be torn apart, inspected and determined to be free of malware by the open source community. Open-Source programs cannot hide any secret Trojan Horse programs because of their ‘open’ software design.

In future posts I will be discussing some of the most widely used Open Source and Free software that you can trust to not carry any Trojan Horse or Spyware applications.

Check back here tomorrow for the next installment in the Beginners Guide to Malware, Viruses and Spyware or you can Subscribe to our RSS feed to make sure that you don’t miss any other updates here at Tech-Bitz.com

Tomorrows topic will be: Making Money from Malware: Spyware, botnets, keystroke loggers and dialers.

Filed under: Internet, Security, Spyware Watch