-=> Mocking Patrick Ahlbrecht to Kurt Wismer <=-
   
 KW>not viruses (trojans do not self-replicate) and the only reason they're
 KW>harder to catch is that there are so many simple trojans that one can
 KW>possibly make... an install.bat with a simple single line command could
 KW>be made that would be a trojan...
 PA> I'd say it's more because trojans aren't that widespread (due to the
 PA> lack of beeing able to reproduce). They'd typically only show up on
 PA> a view systems.
any given virus isn't as widespread, this is true, but they're easier
for wouldbe attackers to create so that trojans in general have the
potential to be a lot wider spread than they are...
however, most of the people who might be interested in developing such
software tend to look down their noses at "trojans" because there's no
challenge in making them...
 PA> Also (imho) trojans are more a problem of the Unix world (and since
 PA> most people use MS ...). I mean what could a trojan possible do
 PA> to a MS system  (that is if you were able to upload it afterall) ?
 PA> Formatting your C: ? Big deal ... very satisfyieng indeed.
you can do a lot more than that, assuming you know what you're doing and
not limiting yourself to a batch file...
 But under
 PA> Unix there are the real possibilities :
 PA> - re-routing mail
were you to route mail on a dos machine you'd be able to reroute with a
trojan...
 PA> - locking out root
even better, you can make a trojan that will cause a dos machine to
simply not boot anymore (effectively the same as locking out the root
user)...
 PA> - leaving backdoors to the system
there are trojans that do this on dos based bbses...
 PA> - stealing data out of /home
also possible on dos machines (though not practical because really
valuable data tends to be stored on unix machines)...
 PA> - ok, crashing the system is possible as well ;)
but there are so many ways to crash a system... circular partitions,
encrypting key areas of the drive (or overwriting them), corrupting
cmos, diddling data (eventually it'll diddle something important), and
the list goes on...
... E = mc^2 = mv{photon}^2 = m(d^2)/(t^2) = mad = Fd = W...
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