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Thanks to educators like , ethical hackers are learning to find those digital wooden horses before the gates close.

The backdoor isn't the infection; it’s the result of the infection.

Let’s walk through the key takeaways. A Trojan horse is malicious software disguised as legitimate software . Unlike viruses or worms, Trojans do not replicate themselves. They rely entirely on social engineering—tricking you into clicking, installing, or opening something.

A backdoor is a piece of code that bypasses normal authentication procedures. While developers sometimes create backdoors for legitimate debugging (which is bad practice), malicious backdoors allow an attacker to remote-control your machine.