glossary

An advanced persistent threat is deployed by cyber-criminals who have a high level of expertise and important resources to infiltrate a network. They usually use this type of attack to target large organizations seeking to retrieve economic or financial information. In some cases, they might even try to use this form of attack to stop or block a company’s program or agenda. Since an advanced persistent threat is executed over long periods of time, it is difficult to detect and block by average users and requires a specialized security program or a team of experts to find a solution.

Adware is a type of software that delivers ads on your system. Usually, these pop-up ads appear while visiting sites, like annoying pop-up ads or banners. They come in “bundle” versions with other applications. Most types of adware are not dangerous, maybe a bit annoying since they deliver pop-up ads while visiting a website, but there is another dangerous form of adware that delivers spyware, which can track down your activity and retrieve sensitive information. For this reason, users must not download an application from unsafe websites and pay attention to software that comes bundled. Less serious issues caused by adware can be slow-down problems or too many annoying pop-up ads that can fill your computer screen. Not to mention the stability issues which could affect your system. To remove malicious adware or spyware from the system, check online for specialized tools like Malwarebytes or Spybot.

Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection is a new technology that protects systems or networks against malicious and cyber-criminal activities using a heuristics-based detection, and less the classic signature-based methods. This detection type is still new and delivers a high number of False Positives. The problem is that a system must recognize abnormal activities and flag them as dangerous, but it is yet difficult to instruct a computer on what exactly a normal usage of the system is.

An anonymizing proxy is a way to hide your online activity and/or make it really difficult to be disclosed by third parties, like countries that apply Internet censorship. These proxy servers act as an intermediary connection between your computer and the final target. From an outsider’s point of view, they access those web locations and hide your computer’s IP from further identification. Usually, they are used to access freely Internet content under strict censorship.

The general usage of this term – Anti-malware – refers to a number of software programs and applications that are capable to detect and remove malware from individual systems or from larger networks. Though the term is usually used in connection with classic antivirus products, the anti-malware abilities can include anti-spyware, anti-phishing or anti-spam solutions. Lately, the term has spread to name specialized software that fights data-stealing malware delivered by online criminals.

Anti-spam terms or better said anti-spam techniques are employed by special software programs that fight spam, which is unsolicited e-mail. The spam problem needs to be solved not only at the individual level of each user but at an even greater level, that of system administrators that need to secure thousands of computers from spam. Spamming attempts become a greater problem for everybody because this is one of the main ways to deliver the most dangerous malware in the wild and additional phishing threats.

Anti-spoofing techniques are used in order to stop the DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks that affect so many websites. To deliver these attacks, hackers are “spoofing” IP addresses, from where they send a great number of requests.

When the website server attempts to reply to the requests, it gets stalled by waiting to access servers that actually do not exist. In this case, again, it is difficult to detect the source of the attacks, therefore the only available solution is to use software that can detect these fake IP addresses and refuse the connection.

Anti-spyware technology is used in detecting and blocking spyware attempts. Spyware is a type of software that allows advertisers or online criminals to discover personal data from a computer, without the user’s permission. Spyware can infect your computer if you visit certain websites, with pop-up messages that ask you to download an application or program. If such software gets on your computer, it will attempt to track down your online activity and send that information to third parties. Usually, spyware is detected when it starts using system resources, finally affecting the overall stability.

An attack signature is a unique piece of information that is used to identify a particular cyber attack aimed at exploiting a known computer system or a software vulnerability. Attack signatures include certain paths used by cyber criminals in their malicious compromise attempts. These paths can define a certain piece of malicious software or an entire class of malware.

The process of authentication (or identification) of an individual is usually based on a username and a password. This process is used to allow access to an online location or resource to the right individual by validating the identification.