Trojan-Tuesday we will be discussing about one malware in particular i.e. “TROJAN HORSE”. Actually there is a story behind how this malware got its name. The incident took place way back in the history when the Greeks were trying to invade the city of Troy.
The people living in the city of Troy were known as Trojans. During the war between the Greeks and the Trojans, Greeks surrendered and gave a huge wooden horse as a memento to the Trojans. The Greeks sailed back and the Trojans took the wooden horse into their city as a symbol of victory. The master plan behind the wooden horse was that the Greeks filled the wooden horse with few number of their soldiers before the Trojans took it into their city. Now when the dawn came the soldiers creped out of the wooden horse and secured the path for rest of the troop to get inside the city to launch the attack. Eventually Greeks invaded the city of Troy.
Now in cyber security Trojan horse works in a similar way .It is coded in such a way it attracts the user and compels the user to execute it in the system. Once the Trojan horse gets executed, first thing it does is that it creates a backdoor through which that attacker can get a remote access to the host system. The purpose of a Trojan horse are Data destruction, Data theft, to the a particular resource as well as identity, Passive spying, Stealing of money.
Below mentioned are examples of Trojan horse:-
- Ø FinFisher – used by Lench IT solutions / Gamma International
- Ø DaVinci / Galileo RCS – used by HT S.r.l. (hacking team)
- Ø 0zapftis / r2d2 StaatsTrojaner – used by DigiTask
- Ø TAO QUANTUM/FOXACID – used by NSA
- Ø Magic Lantern – used by FBI
- Ø WARRIOR PRIDE – used by GCHQ.
Dipak Parmar 