Cybersecurity Midterm Vocabulary

Digital Footprint

The trail that you leave behind when you engage in online experiences.

Virtual Machine

An emulation of a computer system.

Brute Force Attack

An attempt to discover information, especially passwords, through trial and error. Attackers try as many passwords or phrases as possible hoping one of the guesses is correct.

Dictionary Attack

A systematic attempt to crack a password testing with words and phrases found in online dictionaries.

Encryption

A process that converts human-readable text or data into a coded from.

Algorithm

A set of steps to accomplish a task.

File Extension

The part of the filename that comes after the period, indicating the file type.

Social Media

Websites and applications used for communication by large groups of people, enabling them to share information.

Spam

Irrelevant or inappropriate messaging sent through email to a large number of recipients.

Phishing

Practice of sending fraudulent emails that appear to be from legitimate companies with the intent to induce people to share sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

Top-level domain

The last segment of a web address; it follows immediately after the last "dot" symbol (.com, .net, .org, .gov)

Malware

Software that is intended to do harm or damage.

Social Engineering

A broad category for techniques that aim to psychologically manipulate a person's trust to gain access to data or computing resources, usually by being tricked into clicking on a link, opening a file, or answering a question.

Network Topology

The arrangement of the various elements (computers, routers, switches, etc) of a network.

Vulnerability

A weakness in a system that allows an attacker to gain unauthorized access.

Adware

Advertising software that can automatically download files or link to websites

Pop-up

A new dialog box that appears on your screen, sometimes without you requesting it.

Operating System

Software that supports a computer's basic functioning.

Firewall

Software that can stop malware from entering a network, computer, or device.

Server

A computer shared by multiple users across a network. It usually contains resources such as files, computer applications, or large databases.

Router

A network device that controls and filters data between networks, either wired or wireless. It is a specific type of "gateway", a device that acts as a gate between two networks.

Port

A way for a computer to identify specific programs and manage their activity. In an IP addresses, it appears after a colon at the end of the address such as :21, :80, and :443.

Web Server

A computer that delivers files forming web pages across a network to requesting clients.

HTTP

The rules of communication that web sites use to exchange data.

Log file

A file that contains an official record of activities that occur on a computer.

Antivirus

Software that runs on your computer, looking for many different types of malware from many different sources.

Zip file

A file that contains a collection of other files.

Wildcard

A special character that can represent one or more characters. The asterisk (*) can stand from many letters, numbers, or symbols.

RAM

Random Access Memory

URL

Uniform Resource Locator - The systematic way to find specific web addresses and web pages.

Site certificate

It allows an organization to have a secure website.

Domain name

Typically, the last two elements of a URL.

IP Address

An identifying number for hosts and servers on the internet.

DDoS Attack

A (distributed) denial of service attack that targets websites and web servers with the intention of bringing the services they provide to a halt.

Packet

Small units of data, transmitted on a network.

Penetration Test

Performing a computer attack to evaluate the security of a system.

Forceful browsing

When hackers can use their knowledge of a web server's directory structure to craft URL addresses and navigate to locations that are unreferenced and unlinked in a web site .

Host

A computer, typically one on a network. A host can also be referred to as a machine or a system.

Attack Surface

The sum of all the vulnerabilities that allow unauthenticated users to attack a network.

Client

The device that is requesting information or services from a server on a network.

Cross-site scripting

A type of exploit in which the attacker inserts malicious client-side code into webpages to steal data, take control of a computer, run malicious code, or achieve a phishing scam.

Linux

An operating system similar in concept to the Windows OS but used more often to host routers and web servers.

Packet sniffing

Refers to the action of watching and analyzing network traffic at the packet level.

MAC Address

Unique numeric code that is assigned to networking hardware components (typically a network interface card or NIC) that is built into computers and mobile devices.

File system

A collection of files on a computer, logically grouped together.

Access Control

The selective process of allowing or restricting the availability of a resource.

ASCII

A standard that computers use to represent letters , numbers, and symbols.

Open source

Describes software that is is freely available to anyone who wants to use it. Users can modify it and distribute it however they want.

Shell

A program that allows a user to enter commands to interact with an operating system.

Pipe

In UNIX, indicated by a vertical bar | , it connects or redirects output from one command to the input of another.