Trojan horse

Trojan Horse
—n
1.	Greek myth Also called: the Wooden Horse the huge wooden hollow figure of a horse left outside Troy by the Greeks when they feigned retreat and dragged inside by the Trojans. The men concealed inside it opened the city to the final Greek assault
2.	a trap intended to undermine an enemy
3.	computing a bug inserted into a program or system designed to be activated after a certain time or a certain number of operations

Trojan Horse definition

In classical mythology, a large, hollow horse made of wood used by the Greeks to win the Trojan War. The resourceful Odysseus had come up with the plan for the horse. The Greeks hid soldiers inside it and left it outside the gates of Troy. They anchored their ships just out of sight of Troy and left a man behind to say that the goddess Athena would be pleased if the Trojans brought the horse inside the city and honored it. The Trojans took the bait, against the advice of Cassandra and Laocoon. That night the Greek army returned to Troy. The men inside the horse emerged and opened the city gates for their companions. The Greeks sacked the city, thus winning the war.

Note: The story of the Trojan horse is the source of the saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

trojan horse definition n. a kind of malicious software that arrives at a personal computer embedded in some other software and then introduces routines that can gather personal information or destroy the operationality of the computer. : The consultant called the intruder a “trojan horse” and said I needed yet another program to get rid of it.

Trojan horse definition

application, security
(Or just "trojan") A term coined by MIT-hacker-turned-NSA-spook Dan Edwards for a malicious, security-breaking program that is disguised as something benign, such as a directory lister, archiver, game or (in one notorious 1990 case on the Mac) a program to find and destroy viruses! A Trojan horse is similar to a back door.
See also RFC 1135, worm, phage, mockingbird.
[Jargon File]
(2008-06-19)