EC-Council glossary
Key EC-Council certification terms and acronyms.
Definitions are AI-assisted and reviewed for general accuracy — verify critical details against EC-Council's official documentation.
ARP PoisoningAddress Resolution Protocol Poisoning
An attack that sends forged ARP replies to associate the attacker's MAC address with a legitimate IP address on a LAN.
CEHCertified Ethical Hacker
EC-Council certification validating knowledge of hacking techniques, tools, and countermeasures used to assess and secure systems legally.
Cryptography
The science of securing information through encryption and decryption algorithms to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity.
CVECommon Vulnerabilities and Exposures
A publicly maintained list of standardized identifiers for known cybersecurity vulnerabilities maintained by MITRE.
DDoSDistributed Denial of Service
A DoS attack launched simultaneously from multiple compromised systems, making mitigation more difficult.
DoSDenial of Service
An attack that overwhelms a system or network with traffic or requests to make it unavailable to legitimate users.
Enumeration
The active process of extracting usernames, shares, services, and other resources from a target system after initial scanning.
Firewall
A network security device that filters incoming and outgoing traffic based on predefined rules to block unauthorized access.
Footprinting
The passive and active reconnaissance process of gathering information about a target system or organization before an attack.
Honeypot
A decoy system intentionally configured to attract attackers and study their tactics, techniques, and procedures.
IDSIntrusion Detection System
A system that monitors network or host activity for malicious events and alerts administrators when threats are detected.
IPSIntrusion Prevention System
A system that monitors for malicious activity and actively blocks or rejects detected threats in real time.
Metasploit
An open-source penetration testing framework that provides exploits, payloads, and auxiliary modules for security testing.
MitMMan-in-the-Middle
An attack where an adversary secretly intercepts and potentially alters communications between two parties.
NmapNetwork Mapper
An open-source network scanning tool used to discover hosts, open ports, and running services on a network.
OSINTOpen Source Intelligence
The collection and analysis of publicly available information from sources such as websites, social media, and public records.
Pen TestingPenetration Testing
An authorized simulated attack on a system or network to identify exploitable vulnerabilities before malicious actors do.
PKIPublic Key Infrastructure
A framework of policies, hardware, software, and procedures for managing digital certificates and public-key encryption.
RATRemote Access Trojan
A type of Trojan that gives an attacker remote administrative control over the infected system.
Session Hijacking
The exploitation of a valid session token to gain unauthorized access to a user's authenticated session.
SQL Injection
An attack technique that inserts malicious SQL statements into input fields to manipulate or extract data from a database.
Steganography
The practice of hiding secret data within an ordinary, non-secret file or message to avoid detection.
Trojan
Malware disguised as legitimate software that, once executed, performs malicious actions without the user's knowledge.
Vulnerability Assessment
The process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing security weaknesses in a system or network.
XSSCross-Site Scripting
A web vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users.