What is a Trojan?
A Trojan Horse is an unauthorized instruction contained within a program that performs functions unknown to (and probably unwanted by) the user. On a personal computer, trojans can be destructive to the system.
Why the name 'Trojan Horse'?
In the 12th century B.C., Greece declared war on the city of Troy. The dispute erupted when the prince of Troy abducted the queen of Sparta and declared that he wanted to make her his wife, which made the Greeks and especially the queen of Sparta quite furious. The Greeks gave chase and engaged Troy in a 10-year war, but unfortunately for them, all of their efforts went down the drain. Troy was simply too well fortified. In a last effort, the Greek army pretended to be retreating, leaving behind a huge wooden horse. The people of Troy saw the horse, and, thinking it was some kind of a present from the Greeks, pulled the horse into their city, without knowing that the finest soldiers of Greece were sitting inside it, since the horse was hollow. Under the cover of night, the soldiers snuck out and opened the gates of the city, and later, together with the rest of the army, killed the entire army of Troy. This is why such a program is called a Trojan horse - it pretends to do something while it does something completely different, or does what it is supposed to be and hides its malicious actions from the user's prying eyes.
What do Trojans Do?
Trojans are notorious for their mischievous behaviour, such as gaining access to your hard drive, putting random nonsensical pop-up message boxes, etcetera. Some can even gain full control over your computer, log all your keys, and sometimes even interfere with them, upload and download scripts, make a screenshot of your monitor, or sometimes just pop-up a joke on your screen, and so on.
Regardless of their strength, no trojan can ever get away from a smart antivirus scanner. Normally, trojans would usually want to start automatically whenever you boot-up your computer. There are program monitors that will tell you you exactly what processes are running on your computer but some trojans, use fake names and its a little harder to realize that they are infected. Also, some trojans might allow the attacker to download, upload and execute files quickly and easily.
Getting Rid of Trojans
There are basically two separate ways to remove trojans and viruses from your computer. The first one is simple. Research the market well and get yourself a smart and up-to-date anti-malware kit. Then follow up the instruction given by the application creator - which usually comprises of booting up in safe mode, or some sort of recovery mode and scanning the entire system. The second method is verbose where you have to manually identify the possible trojans. Remember that even if you're working on a restricted environment, there is still a risk of the passwords and files.
To prevent trojans from getting into your system in the first place, do not download any files from untrusted sources. Make sure you don't run any unauthorized software, and always keep your system up to date with the latest anti-virus patch.
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