Virus and Trojan-Horse Applications
Viruses are small pieces of mobile code that attach to other programs or documents and can then infect a computer when the program is executed or the document is opened. Trojan horses are applications that appear to be benign but contain potentially malicious code that can be used to attack the system it is run on.An example of a Trojan-horse program is one that appears to be a game or some other normal application but when played inserts itself into the system, opens up a port on the host, and sends an e-mail to the attacker that indicates that it has successfully infected the host. The attacker can then connect into the system from the outside and access the system and the network.Examples of viruses include the Melissa and the "I Love You" viruses, which were Visual Basic scripts attached to e-mail. When the user opened the e-mail, the mail program executed the code found in the scripts, which caused the virus to be mailed to every e-mail address in the user's address book.