Trojan horses

type of malware that pretends to be a legitimate program

Hacking Team was a Milan-based information technology company that sold offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations. Its "Remote Control Systems" enabled governments and corporations to monitor the communications of internet users, decipher their encrypted files and emails, record Skype and other Voice over IP communications, and remotely activate microphones and camera on target computers. The company was criticized for providing these capabilities to governments with poor human rights records, though HackingTeam stated that they

international police sting operation between 2018 and 2021

thumb|Suspected FinFisher government users that were active at some point in 2015.

backdoor discovered in 2024

computer malware timeline

Koobface is a network worm that attacks Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms. This worm originally targeted users of networking websites such as Facebook, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, and email websites such as GMail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail. It also targets other networking websites, such as MySpace, Twitter, and it can infect other devices on the same local network. Technical support scammers also fraudulently claim to their intended victims that they have a Koobface infection on their computer by using fake popups and using built-in Windows programs.

type of malware capable of controlling a system through a remote network connection

ransomware trojan

DarkComet is a remote access trojan (RAT) developed by Jean-Pierre Lesueur (known as DarkCoderSc), an independent programmer and computer security coder from France. Although the RAT was developed back in 2008, it began to proliferate at the start of 2012. The program was discontinued, partially due to its use in the Syrian civil war to monitor activists but also due to its author's fear of being arrested for unnamed reasons. As of August 2018, the program's development "has ceased indefinitely", and downloads are no longer offered on its official website.

The Vundo Trojan (commonly known as Vundo, Virtumonde or Virtumondo, and sometimes referred to as MS Juan) is either a Trojan horse or a computer worm that is known to cause popups and advertising for rogue antispyware programs, and sporadically other misbehavior including performance degradation and denial of service with some websites including Google and Facebook. It also is used to deliver other malware to its host computers. Later versions include rootkits and ransomware.

computer worm

rogue security software

XcodeGhost (and variant XcodeGhost S) are modified versions of Apple's Xcode development environment that are considered malware. The software first gained widespread attention in September 2015, when a number of apps originating from China harbored the malicious code. It was thought to be the "first large-scale attack on Apple's App Store", according to the BBC. The problems were first identified by researchers at Alibaba, a leading e-commerce firm in China. Over 4000 apps are infected, according to FireEye, far more than the 25 initially acknowledged by Apple, including apps from authors out

Man-in-the-browser (MITB, MitB, MIB, MiB), a form of Internet threat related to man-in-the-middle (MITM), is a proxy Trojan horse that infects a web browser by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in browser security to modify web pages, modify transaction content or insert additional transactions, all in a covert fashion invisible to both the user and host web application. A MitB attack will be successful irrespective of whether security mechanisms such as SSL/PKI and/or two- or three-factor authentication solutions are in place. A MitB attack may be countered by using out-of-band transaction