A Trojan horse does not self-replicate, however, so the spread of a Trojan horse depends
upon tricking users into downloading its code. Sometimes this is accomplished using ???social engineering??? to
trick naive users into clicking on an internet link which then downloads an executable file with the hidden
functionality.
Trojan horses are often spread with pornography, for example. The file download may promise, and
perhaps deliver, erotica, but it also delivers a Trojan horse which could make the user??™s computer accessible to
the attacker remotely. Such a variety of Trojan horse is called a remote access Trojan (RAT).
CHAP. 9] SOCIAL ISSUES 175
KaZaA is a file-sharing community used to exchange music files, video and movie files, and games. The
company has a checkered record of conflicts over its facilitation of copying of copyrighted materials
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa). A study in 2003, and reported in Wired magazine (Zetter, K., ???Kazaa
Delivers More Than Tunes,??? Wired, January 11, 2004), found that 45 percent of the 4778 executable files the
researchers downloaded from KaZaA during one month contained viruses or Trojan horses!
A worm is a program that travels through the network by exploiting weaknesses in the security systems of
computers on the network.
Pages:
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481