Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpsemc!jat
From: jat@hpsemc.HP.COM (Joe Talmadge)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Virus Terminology Survey
Message-ID: <1070001@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Date: 24 Nov 88 00:13:09 GMT
References: <93400013@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Cabal of Fools
Lines: 49

Here are my definitions:

>VIRUS -- a program which replicates itself and causes damage; so-called
>  because of similatrites to viruses which make people/animals sick.

A program which attaches itself to a "host" program.  When the host
program is executed, the virus does its dirty deeds, typically
consisting of a) attaching itself to other hosts, and b) doing some
kind of diddling in the system.  A virus cannot execute itself, but is
only executed when the host is executed.

>WORM -- a program which copies itself to other systems over a network.
>  Sometimes it seems to be taken for granted that worms are nasty, others
>  it seems necessary to add modifiers to that effect.

A program which "worms" its way through a system or a network, and
does some dirty deeds.  A worm is a running process, or at least has a
way of running itself.

>TROJAN HORSE -- a program which sits on a system until someone runs it;
>  then it attacks the system using the priviledges of whoever activated
>  it. Since this term is taken from Greek mythology, a TH is always nasty
>  (the image is something that you let into your address-space/file system
>  and something leaps out of it and kills you).

A program which makes believe it is something else, then does its
dirty deeds when an unsuspecting user executes a supposedly benign
program.

>HACKER -- a person who maliciously breaks into systems. I hate this term,
>  since I call myself a hacker pretty often. CRACKER is a better term,
>  much more widely used in Europe I am told ("crackers are" in British
>  slang). Hacker originally referred to someone who could look at
>  10,000+ lines of assembly code and figure out the 6 bytes that needed
>  to be changed (a "hack" at the giant block of code) to fix the thing.
>  It is supposed to be a term of some reverence indicating someone who
>  both fervently and successfully pursues a given discipline. Thus terms
>  like "UNIX hacker", "AI hacker", "Network hacker" and "cracker hacker."

I still use "hacker" to mean someone who is very good at computer
programming, and enjoys doing it.  I call people who maliciously break
into other people's systems "pricks", a term I would like to introduce
into the language.



Joe Talmadge			Trust me.  I know what I'm doing.
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