[Techtalk] confused malware terminology? 'Trojan virus'

[Michael Fisher]

I think you are correct Carla that they just mixed up their terms. After
reading the article it seems to bea Trojan Horse and not a virus. In my
experience a virus just does damage when it is loaded whereas a
Trojan Horse installs itself and waits to be triggered by certain actions.

Wikipedia seems to agree with us but also points out that "Viruses are
sometimes confused with computer
worms<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm>
 and Trojan horses <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Horse_(Computing)>,
which are technically different."

All in all, a pretty sophistacated Trojan Horse.

Mike
-- 
Michael Fisher
desNotes at gmail.com

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:

>
> http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6841779.ece
>
> This story says "Cyber criminals have created a highly sophisticated Trojan
> virus that steals online banking log-in details from infected computers.."
> Isn't that mixing things up, I always understood Trojan horses and viruses
> to
> be different things.
>
> At least they say that it's a Windows malware, which is not a very common
> thing to do; most news stories use "computer virus" as though all computers
> were the same.
>
> Carla
>
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