Trojans

 TROJAN HORSE

A Trojan horse is a malicious program which is often disguised as some

legitimate software, but contains malicious instructions embedded within it. 

A Trojan horse replaces all or part of the legitimate software with the intent of

carrying out some harm to the user’s computer system.

They need to be executed by the end-user and therefore usually arrive as an

email attachment or are downloaded from an infected website. 

For example, 

they could be transmitted via a fake anti-virus program that pops up on the user’s screen claiming their computer is infected and action needs to be taken. 

The user will be invited to run fake anti-virus as part of a free trial. Once the user does this, the damage is done.

Once installed on the user’s computer, the Trojan horse will give cyber criminals access to personal information on your computers, such as IP addresses, passwords and other personal data. 

Spyware (including key logging software) and ransomware are often installed on a user’s computer via 

Trojan horse malware.

Because they rely on tricking end-users, firewalls and other security systems are

often useless because the user can overrule them and initiate the running of the

malware.