A keylogger can be used by a third-party to obtain confidential data (login details, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, etc.) by intercepting key presses. Backdoor Trojans typically come with a built-in keylogger; and the confidential data is relayed to a remote hacker to be used to make money…

The World Wide Web (or WWW for short) was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a British software consultant who was looking for a way to track associations between pieces of information using a computer (much like a thesaurus does manually). His initial program for doing this was called ‘…

The WildList was established in July 1993 by anti-virus researcher Joe Wells, was subsequently published monthly by the WildList Organization and is now published by ICSA Labs (part of TrueSecure Corporation). It aims to keep track of which viruses are spreading in the real world (the WildList FAQ…

WiFi (short for ‘wireless fidelity’) is the name commonly given to wireless networks that conform to the 802.11 specification laid down by IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers]. WiFi provides for fast data transfer rates (up to 11Mbs) and has become increasingly…

Used as one method of filtering spam, a whitelist provides a list of legitimate e-mail addresses or domain names: all messages from whitelisted addresses or domains are automatically passed through to the intended recipient.

A web browser is an application that lets a user access and display content from the World Wide Web.

War driving refers to the act of driving round a city or town to locate wireless access points, or ‘hot spots’, in order to gain unauthorized access to unsecured wireless networks. The specific process of mapping Bluetooth devices is referred to as ‘war nibbling’.

War chalking refers to the act of walking round a city or town to locate wireless access points, or ‘hot spots’, in order to gain unauthorized access to unsecured wireless networks. It is so-called from the act of indicating the hot-spot using a chalk mark.

A vulnerability is a bug or security flaw in an application or operating system that provides the potential for a hacker or virus writer to gain unauthorized access to, or use of, a user’s computer. The hacker does this by writing specific exploit code.

Once a vulnerability has been…

VoIP is a technology that lets subscribers to the VoIP service make telephone calls using a computer network that supports IP [Internet Protocol]. VoIP converts the analog signal used in a converntional telephone, into a digital signal that can be carried over the Internet in packets (and converts…