Threat Types

Adware Tracks a user's personal information, without permission, and passes to a third party.

Backdoor Creates a hole in the system security, in order to obtain remote access to a computer for spam, spying, or other malicious actions.

Backdoor Trojan Masquerades as just another harmless program, and allows other hackers to gain access to your computer through a security hole.

Bomber Floods a user's inbox with spam mail until the system crashes.

Cellhack Utilizes cellular calls or to use a cellphone as a scanner.

Cloner Copies the original information, from the target computer, to the destination folder on a remote computer.

Denial of Service Clogs the network connections, to a target computer, by exhausting computer resource and wasting network bandwidth with requests for service.

Downloader Automatically downloads and runs/installs/updates malicious software without the user's permission.

Dropper Carrier program which installs a virus or malware on the target computer.

Exploit Program or technique used for breaking onto, or attacking, another computer through security breaches in the network.

Flooder Overloads a network connection with massmailing or fast pinging, etc, in order to cause a Denial of Service.

Hacktool Used by unauthorized user to facilitate an attack, or intrusion, upon a target computer in order to gain information or control its function.

Hoax An overblown, and hyperemotional, warning about false threats which urge users to forward them to everyone they know, thereby clogging networks.

Keylogger Records, keystrokes, and makes a log of keyboard activity to obtain usernames and passwords for accessing other computers.

Linker A cluster of viruses which can attack, a target computer, on several levels.

Macrovirus Infects documents or replicates using the internal macro language of an application.

Massmailer Infects target computer, then distributes itself from via mass emailing, to other computers, using the target computer's address book.

Nuker Performs TCP/IP DoS attacks to crash Windows machines, that had not been properly secured.

Pager Sends ICQ messages (WWW pager, regular messages, URL messages) to several target computers simultaneously.

Password Stealer Steals, and decrypts, a password via bruteforce or algorithmic cracking.

Phishing Sends a seemingly-legitimate scam e-mail to a user in an attempt to make the user volunteer private information, that which will be used for identity theft.

Pingers Verifies that a particular Internet address exists and can accept requests.

Port Scanner Attempts to connect to all ports, on a target machine, to see if anybody is listening on those ports and if they are vulnerable to attack.

Script Attacks an unsecured computer via instructions to Microsoft scripting applications.

Sniffer Collects information sent in computer network traffic by standing between the sender and the receiver.

Snoofer Sends spoofed messages that will crash a user's ICQ (A conferencing program for the Internet).

Spammer Extracts email addresses from internet sources and sends unsolicited/spoofed email to these addresses, possibly installing a backdoor for later use.

Spyware Gathers information from a target machine without the user's knowledge or permission. May use "bots" to collect information.

Trojan Horse A seemingly harmless or legitimate program which either carries executable viruses or performs malicious actions against a target computer.

Constructor / Generator / Engine A program made by a programmer for use by non-programmers so they can create a virus.

Worm Non-hosted virus program which makes and distributes copies of itself to other computers using email or other transport medium in order to attack them.