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Encyclopedia

This is our encyclopedia for computer security related terms. It has both brief and full descriptions, and sometimes links for further reading. Each term also have cross-references to related terms in the encyclopedia.

It's an ongoing project to create and update this dictionary, and is by no means finished. But the goal is to make it very complete and useful for the field of computer security.

Feel free to request new words or terms that you'd like us to add.

Term	Brief description
Administrator privileges	The access administrators have
ARP poisoning	Redirecting traffic by sending faked ARP packets
Attacker	A malicious hacker
Blackhat	A hacker interested in illegal activities
Blackhat Briefings	Conferences held around the world to educate about security
Buffer overflow vulnerability	Common and very serious vulnerability in software
CSS vulnerability	Cross-Site Scripting - Input validation error
CVE	A standard for naming vulnerabilities
DDoS attack	Distributed Denial of Service over a network
DoS attack	Denial of Service attack
DoS vulnerability	Software bug which can be exploited in a DoS
Exploit	A realization of a vulnerability
Hacker	Computer interested person, often incorrectly believed conducting illegal activities
High-Level Threat	Affects most users and impacts can be disastrous
IDS	Intrusion Detection System
Information disclosure	Vulnerability that reveals sensitive information
Local arbitrary execution of code	Local attacker can run arbitrary code on a system
Local buffer overflow	A buffer overflow exploitable locally
Local root vulnerability	Allow local attackers to gain root access
Low-Level Threat	Affects very few users of product and impacts are not very harmful
Mail relaying vulnerability	Unauthorized sending mail
Man-in-the-middle attack	An attack scheme to break public-key encryption
Medium-Level Threat	Affects not all users and impacts are typically not disastrous
Remote arbitrary execution of code	Remote attacker can run arbitrary code on a system
Remote buffer overflow	A buffer overflow exploitable over a network
Remote program execution	Vulnerability where attacker can execute programs remotely
Remote root vulnerability	Remote attackers can gain root access
Root access	Full access to a system, see administrator privileges
Segmentation fault	Program tried to access a illegal memory location
Smurf attack	A DDoS attack generating huge amounts of traffic
User privileges	The access normal users have
Vulnerability	General term for a security breach
Whitehat	A hacker wanting to secure systems
Term	Brief description

·	Windows XP shell buffer overflow [MS02-072]
·	Oracle 9i SQL*NET remove denial of service vulnerability
·	Apache 2.0.x information disclosure
·	WS_FTP Server SITE CPWD buffer overflow
·	Macromedia Shockwave Flash malformed header overflow

·	ARP poisoning
·	Mail relaying vulnerability
·	Remote root vulnerability
·	Local root vulnerability
·	CSS vulnerability
·	CVE
·	High-Level Threat
·	Segmentation fault
·	Information disclosure
·	Remote program execution

·	Black Cat Virii Group
·	Help Net Security
·	RAZOR
·	Sun
·	Foundstone