Akademik

Friends and Family virus
n.
A computer virus that infects a machine and then replicates by e-mailing copies of itself to people in the user's address book.
Example Citation:
Trojan worms resort to all sorts of unusual and clever tactics to persuade users to activate them. The Hybris Trojan worm promises recipients a ribald tale involving Snow White and the seven dwarfs. One common type of Trojan worm, often called a Friends and Family virus after MCI's famous marketing program for long-distance services, disguises messages bearing the worm so that they appear to have been sent by someone familiar.
— Brett Glass, "Know Your Enemy," PC Magazine, May 8, 2001
Earliest Citation:
Friends and Family Virus A computer virus that replicates by using an infected machine to send out email messages either by accessing the machine's address book or by replying to incoming messages.
— Gareth Branwyn, "Jargon Watch," Wired, September, 1999
Related Words:
digital pathogen
framily
friends-and-family shares
information warfare
logic bomb
malware
MCI project
ransomware
targeted Trojan horse
togethering
Categories:
Hacking and Hackers
Programming and Software

New words. 2013.