Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Trojan horse (computing)
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Origins of the term== The term is derived from the [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] story of the deceptive [[Trojan Horse]] that led to the fall of the city of [[Troy]].<ref name="Gregg2015"/> It is unclear where and when the computing concept, and this term for it, originated; but by 1971 the first [[Unix]] manual assumed its readers knew both.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Thompson |first1=Ken |last2=Ritchie |first2=Dennis M. |title=Unix Programmer's Manual, November 3, 1971 |url=https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/man21.pdf |page = 5 |quote = Also, one may not change the owner of a file with the set—user—ID bit on, otherwise one could create Trojan Horses able to misuse other’s files. |access-date=28 March 2020}}</ref> Another early reference is in a US Air Force report in 1974 on the analysis of vulnerability in the [[Multics]] computer systems.<ref name="Karger1974"/> The term "Trojan horse" was popularized by [[Ken Thompson]] in his 1983 [[Turing Award]] acceptance lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust",<ref name="Thompson1984"/> subtitled: "To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software." He mentioned that he knew about the possible existence of trojans from a report on the security of Multics.<ref name="Karger2002"/><ref>Karger and Schell wrote that Thompson added this reference in a later version of his Turing conference speech: {{Citation|author = Ken Thompson|title = On Trusting Trust. |journal = Unix Review|date = November 1989|volume = 7|number = 11|pages = 70–74}}</ref> ===Capitalization=== The computer term "Trojan horse" is derived from the legendary [[Trojan Horse]] of the ancient city of [[Troy]]. For this reason "Trojan" is often capitalized, especially in older sources. However, many modern [[style guide]]s<ref name="Microsoft2020"/> and dictionaries<ref name="Collins2020"/> suggest a lower-case "trojan" for this technical use.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)