So it wasn’t about Helen of Troy after all…
It was about you and still is! Trojan horses never go out of fashion. Depending on their type, these harmful applications exploit, spy, conceal files and give remote access to your PC. From then on, the opportunities for hackers are endless and yes, you guessed it, identity theft and credit card information hijacking are among the major risks. They are cunning because they can be disguised as a solution to your problems or, in other words, they may pose as a program that is supposed to rid you of malware but introduce you to Trojans and viruses instead. Although Trojans do not replicate like viruses, they remain one of the most common forms of security risks because of their variety.
A Brief Overview of the Major 7 Types
Remote Access Trojans
They provide hackers with remote access to your PC and the bad news is they are concealed in other applications that you would install on your computer such as games. Remember the last time you learned not to run just any .exe file? That was it!
Data Sending Trojans
These are the one that access your account information (primarily passwords where keylogger may or may not be a part of the bundle) and can be programmed to search for your credit card information. Most people think they are immune to these since they never had a problem with their credit card… until they do.
Destructive Trojans
They are there to delete files and are among the most bothersome Trojans that resemble what viruses do to your computer. Remember how your friends told you about losing all their precious hard drive information to a Trojan and you thought you knew better. The bad news here is that antiviruses often fail to work in this scenario and we are all more exposed than we think.
Proxy Trojans
As the name suggests, these allow hackers to use your PC as a proxy server and wash their hands clean of performing fraud. These are the cases that get FBI coverage and make Hollywood scenarios such as The Net movie come knocking at your door wearing sunglasses.
FTP Trojans
They use File Transfer Protocol to connect to your computer. Simple but scary, these can then be used to access confidential data. Even today you can often find a free access to a public institutions FTP and the question remains why Trojans of this kind are often overlooked.
Security Software Disabler Trojans
These rely on terminating the security programs on you PC. They are usually a bundle deal and there is another Trojan that would take over the action once the defenses of you system are down.
DoS Trojans
These denial-of-service attacks are designed to make the entire network your computer is connected to useless by exploiting confines of the TCP/IP protocols and although it is usually IT specialists responsible for these networks that deal with the threat, your actions as a user on the network matter since DoS are constantly changing.
Finding an efficient way to defend yourself against all of these different types of Trojans may sound overwhelming and, make no mistake, it is. The greater challenge? They change continuously and you need an ever changing protection that would preferably be one step ahead of the hackers. Industry experts often recommend using a variety of tools together to defend different aspects of your system but the problem with doing that is that your PC’s performance suffers greatly. The best advice would therefore be to look for a round security tool that is designed to keep your systems’ performance intact.
