Security from A to Z: Neologisms
An inordinate number of new terms have been created to keep up with the dubious activities of spammers, scammers and their ilk.
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.
Another common industry-inspired term, "spam"--which derives its name from the well-known 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 and 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 Web site for money by using a threat to take it offline, as experienced by many an online gambling site.
A few more colorful neologisms include "bruteforce," "honeypot," "logicbomb," "scriptkiddie," "sniffer" and "zombie."
Natasha Lomas reported for Silicon.com in London.