A hacker may steal personal data and erase your hard drive. Or the hacker may use your hard drive to store pirated movie files or launch an attack on other computers using your infected PC. Most commonly, desktop computers become infected by email attachments.
Opening or executing the attachments results in infection. Filters on our servers detect and stop more than Hackers use other methods to corrupt your PC. A Web site may entice you to download a file supposedly containing a useful program.
Or you may FTP a virus-infected file from a server. It presented itself as a simple game along the lines of twenty questions. However, behind the scenes, the game copied itself onto shared directories where other users could find it. From there, the game could spread across entire computer networks. For the most part, it was a harmless prank. In the s, another infamous Trojan appeared disguised in the form of a simple Whack-A-Mole game. The program hid a version of NetBus , a program that allows one to remotely control a Microsoft Windows computer system over a network.
With remote access, the attacker could do any number of things to a computer, even open its CD tray. As clever as the worm was from a technical perspective, its use of social engineering was arguably its most ingenious component.
Through the s, Trojan attacks continued to evolve, as did the threats they carried. In , a Windows-based backdoor Trojan horse called Beast emerged and was capable of infecting almost all versions of Windows.
Then, in late , another backdoor Trojan called Zlob was distributed disguised as a required video codec in the form of ActiveX. The s also saw a rise in the number of Mac users, and cybercriminals followed suit. The motivations behind Trojan attacks also began to shift around this time. Many early cyberattacks were motivated by a lust for power, control, or pure destruction. By the s, an increasing number of attacks were motivated by greed.
In , a Trojan named Zeus targeted Microsoft Windows in order to steal banking information by means of a keylogger. In , hackers released Torpig, also known as Sinowal and Mebroot, which turned off anti-virus applications, allowing others to access the computer, modify data, and steal confidential information like passwords and other sensitive data.
As cybercrime entered the s, the greed continued, but hackers started thinking bigger. The rise of untraceable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin led to a rise in ransomware attacks. In , the Cryptolocker Trojan horse was discovered.
Cryptolocker encrypts the files on a user's hard drive and demands a ransom payment to the developer in order to receive the decryption key. Later that same year, a number of copycat ransomware Trojans were also discovered.
The s have also seen a shift in how victims are targeted. While many Trojans still use a blanket approach, attempting to infect as many users as possible, a more targeted approach seems to be on the rise. Many of the Trojans we hear about today were designed to target a specific company, organization, or even government.
In , Stuxnet , a Windows Trojan, was detected. It was the first worm to attack computerized control systems, and there are suggestions that it was designed to target Iranian nuclear facilities.
In , Tiny Banker Trojan Tinba made headlines. In , the Emotet Trojan , once a banking Trojan in its own right, was seen to be delivering other types of malware, including other Trojans. As one of the oldest and most common ways to deliver malware, the history of Trojans follows the history of cybercrime itself.
The days of pranks are long gone. Instead, they continue to be serious cybercriminal tools used mostly for data stealing, espionage, and Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attacks. Here are some common threats that come from Trojan attacks:. They attack mobile devices as well , which makes sense given the tempting target presented by the billions of phones in use.
Such Trojans usually lurk on unofficial and pirate app markets, enticing users to download them. The Trojans run the full gamut of mischief, infecting the phone with ads and keyloggers, which can steal information.
Dialer Trojans can even generate revenue by sending out premium SMS texts. The RNA virus is common in rainbow trout and salmon. The fish and coronaviruses have similar structures, he said. They both have spikes and capsids that enclose the virus genome. A virus has different gene segments in a signal. It is able to integrate into the cells of humans or animals, Bohara said. When a disease-causing virus infects a cell, it begins to replicate and divide itself. Once it is divided, it works to kill the cell and then spread to other cells.
The Trojan virus will have some part of the disease-causing virus and will be injected into the cell. It will then divide and replicate to help destroy the disease-causing cell.
A virus has its own genome and on each side, it has specific sequences. The genes made by the virus look at the sequences and package the DNA into themselves, Phelps said.
The Trojan virus needs all of the genes from the coronavirus in order to replicate itself, he said. So if it gets into a cell that is not already infected, it cannot do anything. It cannot be delivered to the tissues that it needs. When using the technology against another virus, like the fish virus, the outside sequences need to be changed to look like the virus that is going to be destroyed, he said.
The team will not be able to work with the live coronivirus because it is deadly, Phelps said. Genetically engineered cells with proteins that can copy the Coronavirus will be used as a safe model system instead. The trials are just beginning, and the researchers will need to prove that the technology works before moving to mice, then possibly humans.
Bohara said the technology will not be as effective as vaccines and is not a replacement. Instead, the virus will aid vaccines. When a body receives a vaccine, it then starts to produce antibodies to fight a virus and get rid of it, he said. When the Trojan virus is injected, antibodies do not need to be produced because it is doing all the work to fight off the original virus.
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