What can a trojan in a wallet do and how?

[paramind22]

I am wondering what can a trojan in an altcoin wallet can do to a computer and how it does it.   How would having something like Avast running protect or not protect the computer.

[MadGamer]

Antiviruses might give you a certain level of protection but If someone really wants to hack you, he will.

Not every virus does the same thing but something made especially for crypto would copy-paste specific address so you send funds the hacker address (least complicated) or even worst, it could search for common type of files used in wallets such as wallet.aes.json, wallet.dat etc. and steal the files by sending them to a server elsewhere.

Having your wallet encrypted doesn't help either because If someone manages to do the above, be sure that you have a keylogger as well and your password is already compromised.

[BitcoinHodler]

a trojan or generally speaking any malware is just another computer program that is running maliciously in the background and can do all sorts of things depending on how it is designed.
usually it is something like a keylogger to steal your private keys, passwords, ... and send them to the hacker. it can be clipboard hijacker to change the address you copy to the address of the hacker.
but another common thing they do is to check your hard disk for any cryptocurrency wallet files and they steal your coins from them.

to protect yourself you have to keep the malicious altcoins away from your important wallets. for example never install an altcoin wallet on a computer that contains your bitcoin wallet. you can always use a virtual machine (a sandbox) to install these things to have an extra layer of protection.

[Dilireba]

it can. a crypto wallet require full permission on your computer and you must let the antivirus software allows wallet to set up on your computer so if they want, a trojan can be in a wallet. you need to only trust verified wallet and don't try to install wallet of new project because it may harm your computer.

[zemper]

I am wondering what can a trojan in an altcoin wallet can do to a computer and how it does it.   How would having something like Avast running protect or not protect the computer.

It all depends on the level of trojan. There are such trojan from which no antivirus will save you. So try to better protect your passwords. Do not store out in the public domain on the cloud. It is better to either memorize them or rewrite them on a piece of paper.

[silver23]

i think that is a little impossible to happend.
all wallet cryptocurrency is have a good secure to protect a data in there and keep always update the system.
so when a virus like trojan in there, a secure will block and delete it.

[maldini]

trojan is one of the malicious malware, this virus can access and retrieve all your important data including the private key that you have. the way it works is usually the attacker inserts this virus into a program so that the potential victim is not suspected, so be careful when running a program, any antivirus does not guarantee your computer is always safe because attackers always have a way to encrypt their viruses so they are undetected.
Always keep your wallet in cold storage without internet, use internet access as needed in your wallet

[Jating]

I am wondering what can a trojan in an altcoin wallet can do to a computer and how it does it.   How would having something like Avast running protect or not protect the computer.

Let's say you got a malware like Keylogger. So once injected in your system all your keys are being logged and probably send to the hacker itself. So if by chance the hacker was able to identify that this certain key might be your password or your private key, then there's a big chance that we will attempt it and try to see if he/she got the correct combination and one day you will be surprised when all your coins is lost.

Of course running anti-virus like Avast is a good prevention. But you need to regularly updated it because its a virus, meaning it self hibernate wherein antivirus will be having a hard time to detect or it evolves itself, meaning another variant has been release. So its not a guarantee as well.