The A to Z of security

Neologisms

An inordinate number of new words and terms are continually being forged to keep pace with the dubious activities of spammers, scammers and malware writers.

Some common security-inspired neologisms you still won't find in the average dusty dictionary are: adware, spyware and malware. But there are many, many more - and many more obscure ones too.

Security from A to Z

Click on the links below to find out more...

A is for Antivirus
B is for Botnets
C is for CMA
D is for DDoS
E is for Extradition
F is for Federated identity
G is for Google
H is for Hackers
I is for IM
J is for Jaschan (Sven)
K is for Kids
L is for Love Bug
M is for Microsoft
N is for Neologisms
O is for Orange
P is for Passwords
Q is for Questions
R is for Rootkits
S is for Spyware
T is for Two-factor authentication
U is for USB sticks/devices
V is for Virus variants
W is for Wi-fi
X is for OS X
Y is for You
Z is for Zero-day

Another common industry-inspired term, 'spam' - which derives its name from the Monty Python spam sketch - has in recent years spawned a couple of lesser known siblings: spit and spim - or 'spam over internet telephony' and 'spam over IM'.

And then there are the 'ph' words - phishing, phreaking, pharming - which strap themselves into the hacker convention of using 'alternative' phonetic spellings.

Some more portmanteaus - hacktivism and hackmail - describe politically motivated hacking, and the act of blackmailing a website for money by using a threat to take it offline, as experienced by many an online gambling site.

A few more colourful neologisms include bruteforce, honeypot, logicbomb, scriptkiddie, sniffer and zombie.

And there's a whole host more...

Let us know your favourite security-inspired neologisms by posting a Reader Comment below or emailing us at editorial@silicon.com.