We've put together a helpful Glossary of Computer Threat Terms, that you can download and refer to at your convenience.

1. Glossary Of Computer Threat Terms
In order to help you understand the minefield of techno-babble and jargon out there, we’ve
put together this helpful guide for you to download and refer to whenever the need arises.
So let’s get started…
Bot
The word “Bot” is a shortened version of the word “Robot” – a computer program that has been
written in order to perform tasks automatically.
Bots become negative when they are used maliciously to allow a remote attacker to control a
victim’s PC.
They can be used to send spam, download and store illegal or questionable content files, such as
some types of pornography, or to make computers participate in attacks on other computers.
A bot can also be made to search the victim’s hard drive and send confidential information to a
remote site on the internet in order to perform identity theft!
Computers that are infected with bots are often called “Drones” or “Zombies”.
Botnet
A botnet is a group of bot infected PCs that are all controlled by the same "command and control
centre".
Hoaxes
Computer Virus hoaxes are there to try and generate fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in the
recipients, bringing them to believe there’s some kind of undetectable virus on their computer.
Other hoaxes include the promise of receiving good luck by passing on the email to 20 of your
friends.
Othersare of malicious intent, where the objective is to coax the recipient into deletingimport
files from their computer unnecessarily.
In all cases they should simply be deleted.
A quick way to check if the email is a hoax, is to do a search for the subject line of the email on
the Internet – invariably the first few results will come back indicating it is indeed a hoax.

2. Malware
The term “Malware” is derived from the combination of the 2 words - “Malicious” & “Software”, and
is a generic term that refers to all software of ill-intent, e.g. Viruses, Trojans, Worms, etc.
Phishing
Phishing (pronounced in the same way as fishing) is a fraud strategy where the sender attempts
toacquire sensitive personal information by deception, such as bank or credit card details.
The standard phishing method is to send an email claiming to be from an important person, your
bank or other such business, containing an apparently legitimate request for information.
Often they will stipulate you either have an inheritance/other such money to claim and that you
need to reply to person X with your financial details, or they appear to come from a bank and are
asking you to update your password or undertake a specific action, which if ignored, will result in
discontinuation of the banking service.
Regarding the financial institution emails, they tend to look very genuine and contain branding and
content which may have originally come from the source that it is impersonating. Usually there will
be a link in the mail that will take the recipient to a website (which also may look very much like the
legitimate site), and this site will be used to capture the details being phished.
The tell-tale sign of a phishing email is that they are asking for personal information to be supplied
via email. Banks and other legitimate companies like Ebay or PayPal will never request usernames
and passwords in unsolicited email.
In the event of receiving such an email we recommend contacting your bank, who may ask for you to
forward it on, so they can look into the matter further.
Payload
The additional functionality or content, e.g. data stealing, file deletion, disk overwriting or message
delivered, etc. that may be included in a virus,worm or Trojan.
Spyware
Spyware is specific software that is used in 1 of 2 main ways…
In the 1st way, it used as tracking software that’s deployed without adequate notice, consent, or
control for the user.
Often the tracking is done by reporting specific information, e.g. browsing history, key stroke
tracking, credit card or personal details, to a third party.

3. The 2nd use of spyware is where it’s delivered as part of another program (much the same way as a
Trojan Horse), but some is delivered as a payload to a worm, or via websites which exploit
vulnerabilities in browsers to silently install the programs in the background.
In addition, there are also many programs which pretend to be Anti-Spyware programs, but are
themselves Spyware – check www.spywarewarrior.org for a list of such rogue programs.
Trojan Horse
As the name suggests, a“Trojan Horse” or “Trojan”, is a program which purports to do one thing, but
actually does another.
Trojans are not always damaging or malicious, but they are often associated with things like deleting
files, overwriting hard-drives, or being used to provide remote access to a system for an attacker.
Classic Trojans include keyloggers (a program that records keyboard strokes) being delivered as
game files, or file deleters masquerading as useful utilities. Trojans can be used for many purposes
including
Remote Access (sometimes called Remote Access Tools or RATs, or Backdoors)
Keylogging and password stealing (Most spyware falls into this category)
Virus
A virus is a program which replicates by copying itself, either exactly or in modified form, into
another piece of executable code.
Viruses can use many types of hosts, some of the most common are:
Executable files (such as the programs on your computer)
Boot sectors (the parts of code that tell your computer where to find the instructions it uses
to boot or turn on)
Scripting files (such as Windows Scripting, or Visual Basic script)
Macros within documents (this is much less common now, as macros in, for instance
Microsoft Word, will not execute by default)
When a virus inserts itself into other executable code, this ensures it’s run when the other code is
run and the virus spreads by searching for other clean hosts every time it is run.
Some viruses overwrite the original files effectively destroying them, but many simply insert
themselves in a way that they become part of the host program, so that both survive.
Depending on the way they’re coded, viruses can spread across many files in the system, across
networks via file shares, in documents and in the boot sectors of disks.

4. 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.
Simply put, viruses infect hosts, and worms infest systems. Often worms exploit vulnerability in
services in network facing services. Such worms can spread very quickly across networks of
vulnerable systems, as they do not require any intervention from users to run.
However, the commonest type of worms are carried in emails (it is important to note that it is not
the email which is infected, but that they carry the worm files). In the case of the email borne worm,
the recipient of the email is the vulnerability that is exploited, usually with an enticing subject or
message.
Usually worms are much easier to remove from a system than viruses, because they do not infect
files. Worms often try to add themselves to the start-up folder, or modify registry keys to ensure
that they are loaded every time the system starts. Again, worms do not necessarily have to do any
damage (See payload).
If you’ve ever experienced the pain of losing hours of work or having infected files and documents,
you can avoid this by simply ensuring your computer remains malware free. Discover how ESET, one
of the leading providers of Anti Virus Software, can help safeguard your computer from malicious
damage.