This day in Tech 1184BC- Trojan Horse defeats state of the art security

The story of the Trojan Horse, whether true or mythical, profoundly influenced Western civilization and inspired many artists. Giovanni Tiepolo painted The Procession of the Trojan Horse into Troy in 1760.
Courtesy National Gallery, London

1184 B.C.: During the Trojan War, the Greeks depart in ships, leaving behind a large wooden horse as a victory offering. It is hauled inside the walls of Troy, and Greek soldiers descend from the horse's belly after dark to slay the guards and commence destruction of the city.

Whether this actually happened, and whether the traditional date given is true, archeological evidence has established that a Trojan War did occur in Asia Minor around 1200 B.C. You can debate how much of the accounts in Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid and elsewhere is legend. But it is in no way mere legend. The war and its lore are a firm part of Western culture and have enriched our language.

The war began when a prince of Troy eloped with the king of Sparta's wife, Helen. Christopher Marlowe called her "the face that launch'd a thousand ships." (Three millenniums after the Trojan War, scientist and science-fiction author Isaac Asimov defined the milliHelen as the amount of feminine beauty sufficient to launch one ship. Generations of snickering male college students would rate women in various hundreds of milliHelens.)

Cassandra was a Trojan prophet who warned against accepting the gift. Today, her name means a person whose warnings are ignored. Another skeptic was Laocoon, who Virgil says first uttered, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

Then, of course, there's the name Trojan horse for software that seems to perform one action but actually performs another, usually with malicious intentions. So, what cybersecurity lessons might we learn today from the first Trojan Horse?

• Persistence: The Greeks had besieged Troy for 10 years without result.
• Epistemology: Things are not always what they seem to be.
• Virgil, updated: Beware of strangers bearing gifts.
• Social engineering: The horse flattered the Trojans, who loved horses and were delighted with the gift.
• Engineering: The horse was on wheels, designed to make it easy for the Trojans to pull it inside their defenses.
• Ignoring warning messages: Cassandra and Laocoon were both disregarded.
• Delay: The Trojan Horse did not do its damage immediately, but waited for the opportune moment.
• Size: It only took a handful of Greeks to unleash a lot of damage.
• Negating security from inside: They killed the guards and opened the gates from within, rendering Troy's strong walls useless. The Greek ships had come ashore again, and their army poured in.
• Scope of damage: Troy was burnt and destroyed.
• Permanent effects: Troy lost the war.

You, of course, could only lose your data, your hard drive, your thesis, your job, your money, your business, your identity or some awful combination of these.