Security plays a crucial role in any web application or system. Many hackers don’t let their single moment waste in compromising the security. They always ready to attack the system so that the crucial information gets troubled. In this tutorial, we will discuss the major differences between viruses and Trojan horse.
What is a computer virus?
It is a kind of malicious software program that spread right through the computer files without the knowledge of a user. A Virus is a malware attached to another program (such as a document), which can reproduce itself and spread after an original execution on a target system. In this human interaction is also required. Many viruses are harmful and can destroy data, hold up system resources, and monitor keystrokes.”
How does a computer virus work?
Even if we are careful, we can pick up computer viruses through normal Web activities like:
- Visiting an infected website
- Installing software applications without thoroughly reading the license agreements
- Opening spam email or an email attachment
- Sharing of photos, files, or music with other users
- Downloading of media players, toolbars, free games, and other system utilities
Some computer viruses are programmed to damage your computer by harming programs, reformatting the hard drive, or deleting files. It floods a network with traffic, making it impossible to perform any internet activity. Some harmful computer viruses can extensively disrupt your system’s performance, sapping computer memory, and causing frequent computer crashes.
What is Trojan horse?
- A Trojan is a type of malicious code /software that looks convincing but can take manage of your computer. The trojan is considered to harm, disrupt, steal, or in general inflict some other harmful action on your network or data.
- The trojan horse acts like an authentic application or file to trick you. It seeks to mislead you into loading and executing the malware on your device. Once installed, a Trojan can perform the action it was planned for.
- A Trojan is sometimes called a Trojan horse virus, but that’s a misnomer. Viruses can execute and repeat themselves. A Trojan cannot. The user has to execute Trojans. Even so, Trojan malware and Trojan virus are frequently used interchangeably.
- Whether you prefer calling it Trojan malware or a Trojan virus, it’s smart to know how this double agent works and what you can do to keep your devices safe.
How do Trojans work?
Following is an example to show how it works:-
- We might think we’ve received an email from someone we know and click on what looks like a legal attachment. But we’ve been fooled. The email is from a cybercriminal, and the file we clicked on — and downloaded and opened — has gone on to install malware on your device.
- When we execute the program, the malware can spread to other files and damage our computer.
- Because the Trojans are designed to do different things. But we’ll probably wish they weren’t doing any of them on our device.
Difference between Virus and Trojan Horse are as under
| Features | Virus | Trojan Horse |
| Purpose | The key purpose of the virus to modify the information. | The key purpose of the Trojan horse to take the information or data. |
| Speed | The spreading rate of viruses is moderate. | spreading rate of Trojan horse is slow in comparison of virus |
| Control | Viruses can’t be controlled by remote. | Trojan horses can also be controlled by remote. |
| Replication | The virus replicates itself. | But the Trojan horse does not replicate itself. |
| Mean | The virus is a computer program that connects itself to another software or computer program to damage the computer system. | Trojan Horse captures some significant information rather than replicate a computer system or a computer network. |
| Antivirus Role | A virus can be deleted as well modified using antivirus | A trojan is quite hard to detect as well as delete by the antivirus |
| Injection of code | Try to inject the code to other files | It doesn’t attempt to inject the code to other files |
Conclusion
Virus and Trojan Horse both are security breakers. They destroy the security of the system. It is very much essential for you that you should use security measures for your system as well as the website so that the security is not breached by the intruders and hackers. In this tutorial, we have provided the major difference between Virus and Trojan Horse. If you are having any doubt, ask me freely in the comment box.
