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There is a saying that good things come in small
packages. Typically this is true, but let me tell you that I
downloaded a small package (program) off of the Internet the other
day and it did not have a good thing hidden inside. What was hidden
inside of the program was a Trojan horse virus that caused me so
many headaches that I actually lost two days worth of work. A
Trojan horse virus is a virus that is hidden inside of another
program or picture that you might download from the Internet. The
program or picture is harmless enough on its own, but the payload
that it carries can absolutely devastate your computer. Here is how
the Trojan horse virus got its name.
Several thousand years ago there was a war that
was fought, according to Greek mythology, between the Greeks and the
city of Troy. The Greek army offered a peace offering of a large
wooden horse that was left outside of the city gates. The people of
the city of Troy took this horse into their city not knowing that
there were Greek troops hidden on the inside. Once the city was
asleep, the troops emerged from the horse and let the entire Greek
army into the city. That is where the name of the Trojan horse
virus comes from. It appears nice on the outside but inside it
contains something very evil. For those of you that have had
trouble with a Trojan horse virus, you understand exactly what I
mean.
Once the Trojan horse virus became active on my
computer it quickly went to work opening a port and allowing other
viruses to enter in. Once these viruses were on my computer they
began to bombard it with pop-up windows and to also log all of my
keystrokes. It wasn't long before all of my passwords were stolen
and this caused and even larger headache for me. Finally one of the
viruses did some damage to some of these system files and I was
unable to log into windows at all.
Most people that have trouble with viruses like
this can go to one of the technical forums for assistance in
cleaning their computer. I didn't have that option because my
computer was so debilitated that it would have taken a computer
genius to get it running again. I had no other option than to
completely format the hard drive and reinstall everything from
scratch. Fortunately I had a recent backup that I was able to pull
most of my important files from and restore them on my system.
I learned an important lesson from this problem
that I had with the Trojan horse virus. When I got my new system up
and running properly the first thing that I did was to download an
antivirus software program. Now anything that I download, whether
it be from the Internet or even an e-mail from a trusted friend, it
gets scanned first thing. I know that this is not a foolproof
system but it will certainly help to keep me clean from any Trojan
horse viruses that are in the wild.
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