Trojan horses 'used a lot more now'

2009-08-27

The use of Trojan horses among hackers is considerably more prevalent in today's world.

This is according to Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, who said that there is a significant difference between the Trojan horses used today and the viruses that have been used in the past by cybercriminals.

He pointed out that viruses copy themselves in a somewhat unrestrained manner, "gobbling up bandwidth", while computers will not pass around Trojans once they have become infected.

"It may well compromise your computer and use your computer, but it doesn't make its presence so obvious that it goes around infecting everybody else," Mr Cluley explained.

He added that Sophos sees large volumes of new forms of malware every day, with increasing numbers of attacks hitting social networks.

A recent report from PandaLabs showed the number of computer systems infected by malware designed to appropriate confidential, personal or banking data has increased by 600 per cent in comparison to the same period last year.

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