Trojan Horse
A Trojan horse is a malicious piece of software that performs a nefarious deed on behalf
of an attacker without the user knowing it is there. As the name implies, some Trojan
horses make their way onto a system embedded within another piece of software.
Pirated software has been known to contain Trojan horse code.
Worms
Simply put, worms are self-propagating viruses. They require no action on the user??™s part
to execute and move from system to system. In recent years worms have been prevalent
and have been used for many purposes, like distributing Trojan horses and other forms
of malware.
Spyware/Adware
Spyware and adware describe the class of software that is installed without a user??™s
knowledge in order to report the behavior of the user to the attacker. The attacker in this
case may be working under the guise of an advertiser, marketing specialist, or Internet
researcher. Besides the obvious privacy issues here, in most cases, this class of software is
not malicious. However, there are some forms of spyware that use key-logging technology
to capture user keystrokes and siphon them off the machine into a central database.
In that case, passwords and financial information may be gathered and that spyware
should be considered a high threat to the user or organization.
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