Fear Of Virus, Is The Beginning Of Wisdom

By Richard Wale Aderounmu

The computer term Trojan Horse  was  borrowed from the classical story of the Trojan War as mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid Greeks besieged the  city of Troy and being worn out by a long siege, they built a giant wooden horse, hid their agents within the horse, left it like a peace offering and pretended to sail away. After the Trojans brought the horse within  the city walls, the soldiers emerged, opened the gates to the Greek armies, and sacked the city of Troy. That is exactly what a trojan does to your PC. A Trojan is a form of computer code or malware (mal- for malicious) that appears to perform a desirable function in the operation of your computer, but unfortunately,
carries out hidden malicious functions.
A rootkit on the other hand, could be a combo of several programs, designed to take fundamental control of your PC, without authorization  and may mask their presence on the system by subverting or evading standard operating system security mechanisms. Access to the vital hardware buttons like the reset button is hijacked, to seize control of the operating system.  
Trojans may also come up   as      rootkits - simple music videos, mp3,  avi files,  prayer-lines ( where a  PC user is compelled to forward unsolicited prayer-lines often rendered as pretty animated gif files  (trojan) to a friend, which inevitably helps virus writers to have access to secret documents and e-mail log-in info of the PC user who receives the virus file. Funny enough, they place a curse on it to ensure strict compliance. These cheap and phony tales are most often used to fool users into believing the programs are safe to run on their systems..
on it to ensure strict compliance. These cheap and phony tales are most often used to fool users into believing the programs are safe to run on their systems..
Whatever name tag they wear, to the ordinary PC user, a VIRUS is a  VIRUS. Once a rootkit has access to your PC, it  installs itself and  modify parts of your operating system.
The earliest known rootkit was written around 1990 by Lane Davis and Riley Dake for SunOS 4.1.1. but there was an earlier, quite famous, exploit equivalent to a rootkit created by Ken Thompson of Bell Labs to invade a Naval Laboratory in California in order to win a bet.
Rootkit was further promoted by the Sony BMG scandal in 2005, when rootkits were included on music CDs, supposedly as anti-copy protection tools, but  was found to alter Windows OS and thus became easy for those who know what to do to take control of other peoples digital valuables.  
With rootkits, an attacker can hide many utility tools particularly in Windows, that may be used to resolve the an attack situation.
Most often a compromised. computer is used as a staging ground for further abuse particularly, within a corporate network. This is often done to make the abuse appear to originate from the compromised system (or network) instead of the attacker's which may be in your neighbourhood, or thousands of miles away.  For such attacks, tools like 'denial-of-service attack', 'chat sessions' relay, 'e-mail-spam' distribution, 'sniffers' and 'keylogger'  tools are often used.
tools like 'denial-of-service attack', 'chat sessions' relay, 'e-mail-spam' distribution, 'sniffers' and 'keylogger'  tools are often used.
In all, rootkits enable the rootkit's programmer access to user names and log-in information of systems requiring them and collection of such information from thousands or more systems are easily possible because  rootkits allow  trojans to access  personal information while it  covers it up.
It has become increasingly popular for virus writers now, to make use of rootkit technologies to hide malware from PC users and 'anti-virus programmes',  this inevitably leads to their widespread use in various trojans or spyware programs and by people who want to satisfy their delinquent cravings.
 When your PC is infected, what should you do? Next week, on this page, we shall be looking at possible solutions.