Trojan Virus Introduction
A Trojan Virus is a form of computer malware that infects a computer through either disguising itself as a useful file or program that you as the user downloads, opens, or installs…normally on purpose. Sometimes computers are infected by Trojan viruses that make use of security vulnerabilities in Web Browsers or Operating Systems and occasionally are delivered as a playload of another Trojan Virus or other computer virus. Once your computer is infected by a Trojan Virus, other malware may be downloaded by the Trojan or contained with the file as payload files which can further damage your computer. Trojan Viruses by themselves, are not known for self replication, but rely on user action and other malware to spread.
Types of Trojan Viruses
Generally, there are two types of Trojan Virus: 1 – Ones that have been injected into software that will run when the end user runs the program and 2 – Ones that are disguised as legitimate programs, pictures, movies, or music to trick the user into executing. The common thread for each type of Trojan Virus is that they depend on user action at some level in order to infect your computer and run. Neither type of Trojan Virus is capable of self-replication.
Trojan Virus Payloads
A general theme of Trojan Viruses is that they are designed to permit others to access a targeted computer system at some level. This could be from the level of gaining full remote control of the targeted computer to steeling passwords or keystrokes. Operations that Trojans have been found to conduct on infected computer systems are:
- Using the infected computer to run a Denial of Service Attack on another website.
- Private data theft (passwords, social security numbers, credit and banking information, etc)
- Upload, download, modification, and deletion of files
- Key logging and screen capture to send to remote servers
- Download of other malware and software
- Gaining Full Remote Control of Your Computer.
Methods of Trojan Virus Infection
Trojan viruses have been proven to infect computers by the following methods:
- Software Downloads (being injected into legitimate looking software, especially “cracked” versions of illicitly obtained software from file sharing networks).
- ActiveX Controls on Rogue Websites
- Security exploits in Web Browsers, Media Players, Instant Messenging Programs, and Media Players.
- Email Attachments
- Social Engineering (tricking a user into downloading or opening the file containing the Trojan Virus)
- Social Networking Web Site Games (basically think a variant on Peer to Peer file sharing)
Trojan Virus Removal (Automatic)
Unless you are a computer security expert or extremely experienced with Operating System-level operations on a computer, updated antivirus software is the best preventative means to keep from ever getting a Trojan Horse. If your system does become infected by a Trojan Horse, you can attempt manual removal of the virus if you are able to identify the threat. If you simply suspect that your computer has become infected by a Trojan Horse and do not have the resources available for a paid anti-virus service, then Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool is a great initial tool to use for checking and cleaning your computer for known threats. The Microsoft tool is updated monthly and once downloaded to your computer will run in the background and warn you if it detects a known threat on your machine. If you do have anti-virus software installed on your computer, then following the steps for automatic update of your software and scanning and removalon your computer are normally the recommended means of Trojan Virus removal.
Trojan Virus Removal (Manual)
Basic Manual Removal Steps for a Trojan Virus are:
1 – Restart Your Computer in Windows Safe mode by depressing the “F8″ key during the rebooting process.
2 – Disable System Restore on your computer
2 – Remove infected .exe and .dll files from the c:\windows, c:\windows\system, and c:\windows\system32 directories on your computer. You will need to know what the name of the Trojan Virus that has infected your computer in order to find the appropriate files to remove from your comptuter.
3 – Remove Trojan Virus registry key entries on your computer. To do this, you will need to open the registry editor by selecting the “Start” menu and typing “command” in the start text field then entering “regedit” at the DOS Prompt. You will then want to enter any key terms or exact key indexes into the registry search text box to find the virus keys to delete.
4 – Reboot your computer in normal mode.
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