trojan

UK/ˈtɹəʊd͡ʒən/US/ˈtɹoʊd͡ʒən/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,664 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: trojans

A Trojan is a program that hides harmful code inside a useful one. Download a Trojan, a banking Trojan, the Trojan opened a back door.

The name comes from the wooden horse: the point is that the user installs it themselves, believing it to be something else. That is what separates it from a virus or a worm, neither of which needs to be invited in.

Definitions of trojan

1nountrojanA program that hides harmful code inside a useful one.B2+
“The free game he downloaded contained a trojan that stole his passwords.”

trojan is a program.

Where it comes from

From the Trojan horse of the Iliad, the hollow horse the Greeks hid inside to enter Troy.

From Trojan horse.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

trojan in the wild

The Jupiter trojans, commonly called trojan asteroids or simply trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter's orbit around the Sun.
Jupiter trojan
The first Jupiter trojan discovered, 588 Achilles, was spotted in 1906 by German astronomer Max Wolf.
Jupiter trojan
Neptune trojans are small Solar System bodies that orbit the Sun near one of the stable Lagrangian points of Neptune, similar to the trojans of other planets.
Neptune trojan
The Neptune trojans are termed 'trojans' by analogy with the Jupiter trojans.
Neptune trojan
In the Solar System, most known trojans share the orbit of Jupiter.
Trojan (celestial body)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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