Beware Of Trojan Viruses From Road Apples
Author: Tim Tropical
I was traveling one time, as I often do, and was staying at a
hotel on my trip home. I went down that morning in order to be
able to grab some of the continental breakfast that they were
serving. This particular hotel had a great breakfast buffet and
I was really enjoying it when I looked over into the corner and
there was a computer sitting in a small office. I asked one of
the hostesses about the computer and they told me that it was
for the visitors to the hotel to be able to check e-mail or to
surf the Internet. I went back into the room in order to do just
that. After checking my e-mail and making sure that my little
Internet world was still running I stood up to leave when
something caught my eye.
Sitting right there on the desk and partially hidden under the
computer was a CD-ROM. I pulled out the CD to see what it could
be and written on the outside were the words customer invoices
and payroll. Now I'm not a dishonest person, but I have to admit
that my curiosity got the best of me. I rationalized it in my
mind that I would just take the CD home and look at it to find
out who it belonged to. In that way I could return it to its
rightful owner. I tucked the CD into my suit pocket and walked
out.
Once I got home I loaded the CD into my computer and ran the
file that was located on it. I was disappointed that the file
didn't open, so I took the CD out of the tray and threw it away.
What I didn't realize is that I had just fallen for a trick that
is known as a road apple. The CD that was left in the small
office was actually a ruse, and by running the CD program I
ended up installing a Trojan horse virus onto my computer.
I had always thought that if I had a Trojan horse virus would
crash my computer altogether. What I didn't realize is that this
particular Trojan horse virus just ran in the background and
secretly watched everything that I did. They recorded all of my
keystrokes and did some screen captures and then sent them all
to the creator of the Trojan horse virus. It wasn't long before
trouble really began to crop up.
The first thing that I noticed that was wrong is that strange
charges began to appear on my credit card. It seems that when I
had typed it in to my computer when I purchased something online
that the Trojan horse virus had sent off my credit card number
and it was used by someone else. Then I was locked out of my
e-mail account and found out that it had been compromised and
used to send out millions of spam e-mails. Most of my accounts
soon became unavailable.
It took me a long time to be able to correct all of the things
that this Trojan horse virus had done. Not only did it steal my
credit card numbers but it took all of my passwords and locked
me out of my accounts. It took many e-mails and a lot more hours
to be able to get all of my passwords changed and my credit
cards reestablished with a different number. So it doesn't
matter what kind of package it comes in, a Trojan horse virus
can strike and cause you a lot of pain.
About The Author: For more information about the Trojan horse
please visit http://www.trojanhorsefacts
