I think one barometer of how IT and security are moving more in tune with the business world instead of being some back room geek department, is how often I read buzzwords and newly created words.
I just read the Websense H1 2006 Security Trends Report and was amazed at all the new words I found.
We have malware, adware, and spyware. I guess I should have seen crimeware coming. Websense I guess crimeware is software use to commit a crime? I think I will stick to malware as my term of choice. I have also seen eCrime.
I also gleefully read how a host with multiple phishing sites is termed to be host to numerous phishes. Phishes…does that mean the host can be called a phish tank, or perhaps a pond? And would abandoned sites be phishheads? The report also referenced spear phishing, which is a more targeted phishing attack. Honestly, I think almost all phishing attacks are a bit targeted. While that term I have heard before, it still amused me since I started looking for these creative terms.
Screen scraping applies to those malware components that take screenshots of the users screen, a means to thwart captchas and virtual keypads kinda like a keylogger for the whole screen itself. Screen scraping just does not sound fun, and reminds me of a windowwasher or perhaps a visit to the dentist.
Now, while I might poke fun at the report for the terms used, the information presented is excellent and a very good read on the trends that Websense has been experiencing so far this year.