A Trojan or Trojan horse is a type of malware that often disguises itself as legitimate software. Cybercriminals and hackers can use Trojans to try to access user systems. Generally, users are tricked by some form of social engineering into loading and running Trojans on their systems. Once activated, Trojans allow cybercriminals to spy on you, steal your confidential information, and gain backdoor access to your system, but… we won’t see a regular Trojan today. We will see the first Trojan called ANIMAL.
The first Trojan, called ANIMAL, (although there is some disagreement as to whether it was a Trojan or just another virus) was developed by computer programmer John Walker in 1975, Fourmilab reported. At that time, “animal programs”, which tried to guess which animal the user was thinking with a game of 20 questions, were extremely popular.
The version that Walker created became very popular and sending it to his friends involved recording and transmitting magnetic tapes. To make things easier, Walker created PREVADE, which was installed together with ANIMAL. While playing the game, PREVADE would scan all computer directories available to the user and make a copy of ANIMAL in any directory where it was not present. The intention was not malicious, but ANIMAL and PREVADE reflect the definition of a Trojan, since hidden within ANIMAL was another program that carried out actions without the user’s approval.
Check more:
Creeper – The first cybernetic Virus on the history
The Morris Worm – The first self-replicating Malware
The First Ransomware in the world – When it all started
