Trojan horse

• Trojan Horse

the Trojan horse

1. (Greek mythology) The hollow wooden horse by which the Greeks allegedly gained access to Ilium/Troy during the Trojan War.

Trojan horse (plural Trojan horses)

1. (by extension) A subversive person or device placed within the ranks of the enemy.
2. (computer security) A malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software.

   Synonym: Trojan

   • 1991, Katie Hafner, John Markoff, Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, revised edition, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 255–256:

     Worse than what could be observed about the program was the fear that it might be a Trojan horse program -- apparently innocent, but carrying a string of code instructing the computer to carry out a specific damaging instruction at some later time.

3. (business) A seemingly favorable offer designed to trick customers into making exorbitant payments.
4. (politics) A person, organization, social movement, piece of legislation, or ideology with a negative agenda or evil intentions under the guise of positive values or good intentions.
   • 1946 October, John Foster Dulles, quotee, American Bar Association Journal, volume 32, number 10, page 681:

     Russia thinks of an atomic authority as a Trojan horse to get behind the iron curtain and impair her defense, and there is some reason historically for this view.

   • 1995, Peter Saunders, Capitalism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 38:

     Seen like this, huge western companies function like a Trojan horse when they are invited inside the boundaries of LDCs.

   • 2003, Efraim Karsh, Arafat's War, New York: Grove Press, →ISBN, page 64:

     Had the Israelis and the Americans realized that the Oslo accords were merely a “Trojan horse” designed to promote the higher goal of Palestine’s complete liberation, he argued, “they would never have opened their fortified gates and let it inside their walls.”

   • 2003, Krugman, Paul R., The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, W. W. Norton & Company, published 2004, →ISBN, page 449:

     Indeed, it may turn out to be a Trojan horse that finally allows conservative ideologues, who have unsuccessfully laid siege to Medicare since the days of Barry Goldwater, to breach its political defenses.

• stalking horse

Trojan horse (third-person singular simple present Trojan horses, present participle Trojan horsing, simple past and past participle Trojan horsed)

1. Alternative form of Trojan-horse
   • 1999, Gary Hoffman, Glynis Hoffman, Adios, Strunk and White, 2nd edition, Huntington Beach, Calif.: Verve Press, →ISBN, page 180:

     You will disarm a group or person that holds simplistic attitudes—about relationships, education, financial success, morality, business ethics, religion, raising children—by giving that group or person Trojan Horsed instructions seemingly about how to do something mundane and unrelated.

   • 2008, Paul Carr, Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, →ISBN, page 88:

     But still, despite my initial shock at being expected to do a grownup job for my new grown-up salary, I was determined to keep the dream alive to some extent, by ticking a few of the sensible boxes while Trojan Horsing (yes, as a verb) some dot com fun in the back […]

   • 2009, Lee Rotherham, Ten Years On: Britain without the European Union, →ISBN, page 88:

     In its place arose a bilateral treaty that spelled out in basic terms that advances made in freedom of movement would be kept, under safeguards; free trade would be advanced bilaterally; goods imported from third countries would not be Trojan horsed; and countries would cooperate in areas of common interest.

• Trojan horse on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Trojan horse (computing) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Trojan horse (business) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia