Cybersecurity: Malware and Dreaded Trojan Horses

Malware is an abbreviated term for "malicious software". It refers to any software that is designed to specifically disrupt or damage a system.  

Malware includes such things as worms, Trojan horse, and viruses.  A Trojan horse is a program that appears to be useful or at the very least harmless.  However, it has been designed to contain hidden code to exploit or damage a computer system. A Trojan horse neither replicates nor copies itself, but performs some illicit activity when it is run. It stays in the computer doing its damage or allows somebody from a remote site to take control of the computer. There are other terms that are associated with Trojan Horses: Remote Access Trojans and Rootkits.   Remote Access Trojans are commonly referred as backdoors.  They allow someone else to control your computer from a remote location.  A rootkit is a collection of software programs that once installed allow someone to gain unauthorized remote access to your computer A self-contained program (or set of programs) that is able to spread copies of itself to other computer systems.  A worm can consume network or local system resources.  They can cause a denial of service attack.  A worm may also deliver other malware such as keyloggers in addition to spreading itself. A virus is a program code that can cause damage to hardware, software or data. Virus code is usually buried within the code of another program (file, document or boot sector of a disk) and once executed it will attempt to replicate itself by infecting other hosts across the network.  Some times viruses are used to deliver other types of malware such as a Trojan horse. Which Trojan Horses have you experienced and which mitigation techniques have succeeded? Share your comments here with the Cloud and Cyber Security Center: http://cloudandcybersecurity.blogspot.com/