How Hackers Attack: Double Trouble?
The story “A Primer: How the Hackers Attack” has a link to another Web site, Distributed Denial-Of-Service, from which users can download hacker programs. Being a little curious, I downloaded one of them to check it out–and lo and behold, my system antivirus software (Norton AntiVirus 6.0) said the program had a Trojan horse virus attached to it. Actually, I think the program itself was a Trojan horse. I think it might be unwise to give this link in the story. Others might be curious too, and might not have the protection I fortunately had. M. P. Fox Editor’s Response: You’re absolutely right: If you load the programs listed on that Web page onto your PC, Norton (and other antivirus software packages) will correctly identify some of them as Trojan horse applications. But the syntax Norton uses in its warning message isn’t entirely accurate: As you point out, the program is itself a Trojan horse, not “infected” with a Trojan horse. A Trojan horse is very different from a virus.
