In computers, a Trojan horse is a program in which malicious or harmful code is contained inside apparently harmless programming or data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on your hard disk.
Trojan horse attacks pose one of the most serious threats to computer security. If you were referred here, you may have not only been attacked but may also be attacking others unknowingly. This page will teach you how to avoid falling prey to them, and how to repairthe damage if you already did. According to legend, the Greeks won the Trojan war by hiding in a huge, hollow wooden horse to sneak into the fortified city of Troy. In today's computer world, a Trojan horse is defined as a "malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign". For example, you download what appears to be a movie or music file, but when you click on it, you unleash a dangerous program that erases your disk, sends your credit card numbers and passwords to a stranger, or lets that stranger hijack your computer to commit illegal denial of service attacks like those that have virtually crippled the DALnet IRC network for months on end.
The following general information applies to all operating systems, but by far most of the damage is done to/with Windows users due to its vast popularity and many weaknesses.
(Note: Many people use terms like Trojan horse, virus, worm, hacking and cracking all interchangeably, but they really don't mean the same thing. If you're curious, here's a quick primer defining and distinguishing them. Let's just say that once you are "infected", trojans are just as dangerous as viruses and can spread to hurt others just as easily!)
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