Threat Types and Terminology

Terminology used to describe attacks is often misunderstood by the broader public. Thus, we are providing this brief explanation of threat types and the terms we use in our reports.

End users and their computers face a number of different attack types. At a high level there are two: 1) Socially-engineered attacks target the user, and work only when the user is tricked into performing an action; running a malicious file or giving up personal data to a fraudulent site. 2) Other attacks target vulnerabilities in systems and applications. The following chart gives a rough breakdown of common threats against end user systems.

Layers of Security
These types of security threats can be mitigated by a range of security products; including IPS, UTM, SWG appliances, and on the endpoint: Internet security suites, most anti-malware products, and even web browsers. Modern browsers have implemented an additional layer of security to help users differentiate between good and bad web sites and downloads.

When selecting security products, either for home or business environments, it's often hard to tell from the marketing literature which products actually stop threats. And protection levels offered by products in the different categories can vary greatly. The above taxonomy should help you ask more specific questions of vendors. It also acts as a guide to terminology used in NSS Labs test reports.

Security products protecting users and their computers
When someone says “Product X stops more malware, exploits etc.” or “Product X offers better malware or exploit protection”, what they mean is that Product X inspects traffic passing through it and stops these attacks from reaching and/or affecting the end user or the operating system.

Security products themselves susceptible to threats
In addition, security suites and browsers (and their plug-ins) can be susceptible to exploits if the software has vulnerabilities in them. When someone says “browser X is more secure” what they are trying to say is that browser X has fewer vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, most software, and all browsers have vulnerabilities. For example in the first 9 months of 2010, Microsoft Internet Explorer had 43 new published vulnerabilities, while Google Chrome had 106, according to Secunia research.

For more exhaustive treatments on threat types including product test results, consult our research services at nsslabs.com.