The adage “nothing in life is free” applies to many free downloadable applications that promise to add value to the user’s experience by way of system utilities, virus scanners, games, and productivity software. Pop-up windows will entice users to click links and install programs that appear to be legitimate and harmless but have malicious ulterior motives. Many Trojan Horse attacks use this strategy to infect systems with applications that deliver a malicious code payload that works in the background to perform unwanted activities, such as erasing files, opening ports and downloading malware, launching denial of service attacks, searching for and disseminating personal information, and create covert back door entries on the host system for subsequent attacks (Easttom, 2018, p.269). Malicious actors have used Trojan Horse attack variants since the mid-1980s to infect computers for the entertainment value or the challenge, but evolved to more deviant reasons, including corporate espionage, hacktivism, creation of Remote Trojan Access (RAT) botnets, and distributed DoS attacks (MITRĂ, 2020).

Trojan removal techniques can vary, and many virus scanners cannot immediately recognize the virus signatures and automatically remove them from operating systems due to Windows registry issues, executables designed to ‘terminate but stay resident’, or system files exceptions. I have used Internet sources to determine the services Many security professionals infected devices must resort to manual deletion of infected system files or reloading entire operating systems. Bleeping Computer (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/) is a valuable resource and hosts a suite of tools for consumers and security practitioners for identifying specific Trojan threats and developing a strategy for removal and mitigation. Care must be taken and due diligence must be performed when utilizing any tool or utility that promises the ability to removal specific Trojans and viruses because, in an attempt to remove one malicious program, another problem may be introduced.

Have you ever tried to remove a Trojan or malware program from your personal or work computer and ended up making matters much worse? What was your experience?  

References

Easttom, C. (2018). Network defense and countermeasures: Principles and practices (Third). Pearson.

MITRĂ, S.-E. (2020). The Structure of Cyber Attacks. International Journal of Information Security & Cybercrime, 9(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.19107/ijisc.2020.01.06