Proxy Trojan

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What Does Proxy Trojan Mean?

A proxy Trojan is a virus which hijacks and turns the host computer into a proxy server, part of a botnet, from which an attacker can stage anonymous activities and attacks.

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The whole point of a proxy Trojan is to hide the attacker, making it harder to trace the true origin of an attack since the attacks will look like they are coming from random and multiple directions because of the proxy bots.

Techopedia Explains Proxy Trojan

A proxy Trojan, as the name suggests, is a kind of Trojan malware which creates proxy servers out of infected computers for staging anonymous attacks.

Like all Trojans, the proxy is spread disguised as legitimate software downloads and attachments or piggy-backing on legitimate downloads and attachments.

This Trojan gives the attacker a lot of opportunity to do malicious activities such as credit card fraud, hacking and other illegal activities since it masks the true location of the attacker.

Aside from that, it can collect information from the host computer and send it to the attacker.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.