Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse

WebDynamic™ Web Glossary

A program that appears to be legitimate but contains in its code instructions that cause damage to the systems on which it runs. It is either hidden inside another program or masquerades as something it is not in order to trick potential users into running it. For example, a program that appears to be a game or image file but in reality performs some other function. The term "Trojan Horse" comes from a possibly mythical ruse of war used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C.

A Trojan Horse computer program may spread itself by sending copies of itself from the host computer to other computers, but unlike a virus it will (usually) not infect other programs.