Secuirty and Theories

[bdh734]

I had an exam in college that asked the following question:

A person sends a worm to an unprotected computer, this is an example of....

A) Threat
B) Exploit
C) Vulnerability
D) Threat Agent

I picked Threat and was marked wrong. They said the answer was
Exploit. I was able to successfully argue that it was a threat by stating
that until the worm is executed, it is a threat and would then exploit
the system only if it was successful. Now their argument was by
definition, the internet is a threat and it is up to the user to
protect. Therefore, the worm is designed by nature to be an exploit.
But if we look into that theory, then the internet would become a
threat agent. Whereas a way to deliver all of the above.

Question is....
Am I right with my theory?

Please advise and explain.

Thanks!

[HostV Nick]

I think you're right because of the following :

A) Threat - This is a threat, it's not yet done anything nor has it successfully penetrated the system so it is a threat.
B) Exploit - Nothing has been exploited.
C) Vulnerability - Nothing in this states they system was infected therefore not vulnerable.
D) Threat Agent - not even close .

Granted I'm in the billing/sales dept these are just my views.

[bdh734]

Any view is going to help me. Granted they gave me the answer, " I guess just to shut me up". But they are still vivid that this is a exploit. Now let me ask this, what if the OS on the unprotected computer was Linux. Then what?

Honestly Hostv Nick, this question is really common sense when you look at it.
Therefore billing/sales does not apply and I think you broke it down good. Thanks.

[geek]

Usually in a case like this they would have:

d) All of the above

Then everything would make sense.

[phpmotion]

I think the question needs to be defined. Did they send it intentionally or unknowingly?

[bdh734]

That is a college exam question. They are not gonna tell you anything more.

[youtube]

I think what phpmotion was trying to say is that the original question should have said whether the person was sending it intentionally or not.