Images Credit: Original BonziBUDDY website from October 19th, 2000 (archive.org)
Left image is the logo of BonziBUDDY, right image the character of BonziBUDDY (purple gorilla).
In summary, a trojan horse is a type of malicious program
that requires the end user taking some type of action in order to run it.
The term comes from the Greeks using a wooden horse to lure the Trojans into an invasion.
Trojan horses are unique from viruses and worms as those types of malware
can often be spread without user interference. With a trojan horse, the end-user must do
something (usually downloading a seemingly innocous program) in order to damage the system.
For this page, I thought it would be fun to exclusiuvely feature BonziBUDDY, one of the most infamous desktop assistants trojan horses to ever exist.
| Trojan Horse Name | Years Active | Trojan Horse Description |
| BonziBUDDY | 1999-2004 | One of the most infamous trojans to ever exist. The
program disguised itself as a digital assistant/friend
that was intended to make using your computer and the Internet easier. It had a respectable assortment of features to make users believe it was legitimate software. However, it was later found that the parent company, Bonzi Software, was providing this program with malicious intent, as it had later been discovered to have a backdoor that can allow more malicious programs to enter the system, in addition to the fact that Bonzi Software was collecting a concerning amount of information about its users, such as physical addresses. If you are interested in this program, please watch the YouTube video linked in the sources list for this page. It also talks about Bonzi Software's other products, such as Internet Boost and Internet Alert. |