🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 01 Apr 1997 01:30:57 GMT, don't....@home.com wrote:

>
>Trojan horse? I thought that was an internet related virus that sent
>your login passwords, etc, to another user? If it describes a virus
>hidden inside a harmless program, all viruses are trojan horses.
>

	No, you're wrong.  It's any malicious program hidden inside an
otherwise safe, useful program. Hence the name, "Trojan Horse" (look
up the story, if you don't already know it).  A virus is a program
that attaches itself to other programs and replicates itself, hence
"virus."  A virus can first be put into a harmless, useful program to
initially get it to procreate, but that is not typically how they are
spread.  Typically, Some program will be run -- probably the virus
itself -- to first start spreading the virus.  From there it has a
life of its own (oh, say, scrambling your hard drive).  Trojan horses
are generally used as you describe, but they need not be excluded to
sending things to another user.
	Here's an example of a Trojan horse:  I could make a web site
that supposedly has downloads of popular programs.  One of these I
offer is Netscape.  You download it and it works perfectly, until it
sees a web site that contains such keywords as VISA, MASTERCARD, and
so on.  Whenever you send information to this server in encrypted
form, my "enhanced" Netscape sends the encrypted information to that
server you're buying from, but it also sends it an unencrypted copy of
that information to my server, without letting you know about it.
This is the type of Trojan Horse you mentioned.  I could, however,
make it so that this special Netscape clears your boot record whenever
you go to a porn site with nasty keywords, thus rendering your
computer inoperable.  Mind, this is only inside a single program and
never procreates, so it is not a virus.  It is just as malicious as
most viruses, yet that does not qualify it as one.


>IMHO if you run a batch file without checking what it does first, you
>deserve what you get. Using the 'type' command from the dos prompt or
>viewing the file in notepad is so easy that you've got no excuse other
>than that of lax security.

Also, a simple anti virus program should protect you.  But, as for
using "type" in DOS, you could be setting yourself up for another very
threatening attack: the ANSI bomb.  In older DOS, and under typical
situations, an ANSI bomb could be made to redefine a key on your
keyboard to, oh say, format your hard drive, just by merely *veiwing*
a text file.  Of course, lately these things aren't a problem.

>
>Dale