Malware Definitions

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Defi­ni­tions of Malware

Adware
A type of Adver­ti­sing Dis­play Soft­ware, spe­ci­fi­cally cer­tain exe­cu­ta­ble appli­ca­tions whose pri­mary pur­pose is to deli­ver adver­ti­sing con­tent poten­tially in a man­ner or con­text that may be unex­pec­ted and unwan­ted by users.
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BOT
Short for “Robot” a bot is a pro­gram that is desig­ned to auto­mate tasks.
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BOTNET
A bot­net is a group of bot infec­ted PCs that are all con­tro­lled by the same “com­mand and con­trol cen­ter”.
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Hoa­xes
Hoa­xes are usually silly pranks, and are a form of chain mail, and are often also Urban Legends.
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Mal­ware
Mal­ware stands for MALi­cious Soft­WARE. Terms such as Virus, Tro­jan, Worm, and Bot all have spe­ci­fic mea­nings.
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Pay­load
The addi­tio­nal func­tio­na­lity, for ins­tance data stea­ling, file dele­tion, disk overw­ri­ting, BIOS flashing etc that may be inc­lu­ded in a virus worm or Tro­jan Horse.
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Phishing
Phishing (pro­noun­ced in the same way as fishing) is a social engi­nee­ring attack which attempts to frau­du­lently acquire sen­si­tive per­so­nal infor­ma­tion, such as pass­words and/or cre­dit card details.
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Root­kit
A root­kit is a collec­tion of one or more tools desig­ned to covertly main­tain con­trol of a com­pu­ter.
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Scams
Scams are very simi­lar to phishing, but are not usually inte­res­ted in obtai­ning your details, they often appeal to a sense of com­pas­sion or to human greed.
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Spy­ware
The term Spy­ware has been used in two ways. In its narrow sense, Spy­ware is a term for Trac­king Soft­ware deplo­yed without ade­quate notice, con­sent, or con­trol for the user.
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Tro­jan Horse
A Tro­jan Horse, often refe­rred to as just a Tro­jan, is a pro­gram which pur­ports to do one thing, but actually does another.
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Virus
A virus is a pro­gram which repli­cate by cop­ying itself, either exactly, or in a modi­fied form, into another piece of exe­cu­ta­ble code.
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Worm
In com­pu­ter terms, worms are really a sub­set of viru­ses, but they have the abi­lity to repli­cate by them­sel­ves, they do not require a host file.
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