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…

VBS is a script language developed by Microsoft®. Like JavaScript is often used in the development of web pages. For specific tasks, it’s often easier to write a script than to use a formal programming language like ‘C’ or ‘C++’.

However, as with a formal program, it’s also possible to use VBS to create malicious code. Since a script can be easily embedded in HTML, a virus author can embed a malicious script within an HTML e-mail: and when the user reads the e-mail, the script runs automatically.

Virus definitions (or signatures) contain a unique sequence of bytes used by an anti-virus program to identify each piece of malicious code. Signature analysis is one of the key methods used to find and remove malicious code.

A VPN is used to provide remote users with secure access to the private network of a corporation or other organization, over the Internet (rather than using an expensive dedicated leased line). Privacy is maintained by implementing encryption and other security features, preventing unauthorized access to the private network.

The term variant refers to a modified version of an existing piece of malicious code. Virus writers are often quick to create new versions of a virus, worm or Trojan that has been ‘successful’, or if the source code for the malware has been published.

Where a file is transferred from one computer to another, the sender is said to upload the file. For example, anti-virus updates are uploaded by an anti-virus vendor to their server, to make them available for users of their software.

USB provides a ‘plug-and-play’ standard for connecting many peripheral devices to a computer simultaneously, without the need for a specific device adapter card for each device. USB allows up to 127 devices to connect to a single computer and allows for rapid transfer of data.

USB 1.1 (the original USB specification, developed by Compaq, IBM, DEC, Intel, Microsoft and Northern Telecom) supports data speeds of up to 12Mbps. USB 2.0 (developed by Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Lucent, NEC and Philips) supports data transfer speeds of up to 480Mbps.