CPM Dictionary: W
Wannabe: Individuals who "want to be" accorded a higher status than they actually hold or rate; noted among the black hat communities
War Chalking: Marking areas, usually on sidewalks, with chalk so as to identify areas that are accessible to wireless signals
War Dialer: Computer program that automatically dials a series of telephone numbers to find lines connected to computer systems, and catalogs those numbers so that the can be used to break into the systems
War Dialing: Process used to identify modems in a telephone exchange that may be susceptible to compromise in an attempt to circumvent perimeter security
War Driving: Traveling around looking for wireless access point signals that can be used for network access
Warhead: See also Payload
Warm Site: Alternate processing site equipped with hardware, communications interfaces, electrical and environmental conditioning which can provide backup after additional provisioning, software or customization is performed. See also Cold Site, Hot Site, Warm Site, Alternate Site
Warning: 1) Message that informs users that performing an action can or will result in data loss on their systems; 2) issued by National Weather Service to advise that a severe weather event is already occurring or is imminent. See also Warning and Forecasting; Watch
Warning and Forecasting: Monitoring events to determine the time, location, and severity of a disaster. See also Warning
Watch: Alert issued by National Weather Service to advise people that conditions are right for a potential weather-related event to occur; issued for specific geographic areas, such as counties, for phenomena such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, flash floods, severe thunderstorms, and winter storms. See also Warning Water Tender: Ground vehicle capable of transporting specified quantities of water
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): 1) Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons/agents, radiological dispersal devices; 2) any device, material, or substance used in a manner, in a quantity or type, or under circumstances showing intent to cause death or serious injury to persons or significant damage of property
Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM): Collection of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments; enables industry to deliver an integrated set of standards-based management tools that leverage emerging Web technologies
Web Bug: Link on a Web page or embedded in an e-mail message that contains a link to a different Web site and therefore passes a call, and information, unknown to the user, to a remote site; typically the bug is either invisible or unnoticeable. See also Adware, Cookie, and Spyware
Web of Trust: Naturally evolves as a user starts to trust other's signatures, and the signatures that they trust
Web Server: Software process that runs on a host computer connected to the Internet to respond to HTTP requests for documents from client web browsers
WFP: World Food Program
White Hat: Considered applicable to "good" hackers versus "bad" hackers versus "crackers" versus phone phreaks versus virus writers versus vxers; security community describes those who attempt to explore security solely from the perspective of defense as "white hats." See also Black Hat
WHO: World Health Organization, a division of the United Nations founded in 1948 and based in Geneva that coordinates and improves health activities worldwide
WHOIS: IP inquiry for finding information about resources on networks
Wild: Component that measures extent to which a virus is already spreading among computer users; includes the number of infected independent sites and computers, geographic distribution of infection, ability of current technology to combat the threat, and the virus complexity
Wild, In the: See also In the Wild
Wildcard: Symbol that enables multiple matching values to be returned based on a shared feature; scripts use two wildcards: 1) question mark (?) which stands for any single character, and 2) asterisk (*) which stands for any character string of any length
Windowing: Shares a computer's graphical display presentation resources among multiple applications at the same time; using a graphical user interface (GUI), this facilitates the management of multiple applications via a separate window for each application; window manager keeps track of where each window is located on the display screen and its size and status
Windows Registry: Database holding system startup, configuration, security, and file association information in Microsoft Windows 9x, Me, NT, and 2000 systems; central repository of all such information, replacing previous CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and .INI files; can be used to launch viruses at boot time, without placing the viruses in identifiable startup directories
Windows Script Host (WSH): Language similar to Visual Basic for Application (VBA) and Visual Basic Script (VBScript) that runs scripts on certain Windows systems
Windump: Freeware protocol analyzer for Windows that monitors network traffic
Wintel: See also ISA
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP): Security protocol for wireless local area networks defined as IEEE 802.11b
Wireless Application Protocol: Specification for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way that wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and radio transceivers, can be used for Internet access, including e-mail, the World Wide Web, newsgroups, and Internet chat
Wiretapping: Monitoring and recording data flowing between two points in a communication system
WMD: See Weapons of Mass Destruction
Work Area Facility: Pre-designated space equipped with desks, telephones, PCs, etc. ready for occupation by recovery teams on short notice; can be internally or externally provided. See also Cold Site, Hot Site, Warm Site, and Alternate Site
Work Area Recovery Planning: Preparing procedures for use at the work area facility
Work Factor: Estimate of the effort or time needed by a potential perpetrator with specified expertise and resources to overcome a protective measure
Workaround Procedures: Interim activities that may be used by a business unit to enable it to continue to perform its critical functions during temporary unavailability of specific application systems, electronic or hard copy data, voice or data communication systems, specialized equipment, office facilities, personnel, or external services
Workstation: 1) Networked computer that uses server resources; 2) computer connected to a mainframe computer, often via a Local Area Network (LAN), to share larger system resources; 3) type of computer that requires a significant amount of computing power and that can produce high-quality graphics
World Wide Web ("the Web", WWW, W3): Global, hypermedia-based collection of information and services that is available on Internet servers and is accessed by browsers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol and other information retrieval mechanisms
Worm: Computer program that can run independently, can propagate a complete working version of itself onto other hosts on a network, and may consume computer resources destructively
Wrap: Use cryptography to provide data confidentiality service for a data object
Write: Fundamental operation that results in the flow of information from a subject to an object
Write Access: Permission to write to an object
CPM Dictionary
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