A program which is different from the specified (specs) one, is said to contain a Trojan horse. The Trojan horse may be malicious. It is difficult to decide whether a program is free of Trojan horses.
A Trojan horse that, when executed, can modify other computer programs, e.g., by copying itself (or a part of it) into these, is called a computer virus. Protection mechanisms used against {computer viruses} are to:
use digitally signed computer programs. Provided these digitally signed programs were developed in a secure and trusted environment, then one can detect modifications to the digitally signed program [3]. (For implementation issues see [1].) If the environment was not trusted, known computer viruses may be in the digitally signed program and remain undetected unless virus scanners are used.
use virus scanners. To a known computer virus corresponds a fingerprint(also known as a “signature” in the computer virus literature). Before running a program (e.g., at the start-up of...
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References
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Desmedt, Y. (2005). Trojan Horses, Computer Viruses and Worms. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_438
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