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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Compromise

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈkɑːmprəmaɪz/verbCore term

In software engineering, compromise means: To get unauthorised access to or control of a system, account or network, so that it can no longer be trusted.

In Turkish: ele geçirmek, güvenliğini ihlal etmek

How it is used

Very common in incident language, usually in the passive or as an adjective: 'the account was compromised', 'a compromised host'. As a noun it means the successful attack itself, as in 'signs of compromise' or 'business email compromise (BEC)'.

Example sentences

  1. We believe the attacker compromised a contractor's account first.

  2. Two compromised hosts were isolated from the network.

Common collocations

  • compromised account
  • compromised host
  • fully compromised
  • business email compromise
  • assume compromise
  • indicator of compromiseA piece of technical evidence that suggests a system may have been attacked, such as a malicious IP address, file hash or domain name.
  • credentialsThe details that prove who a user is and let them log in, most often a username and password, but also keys, tokens and certificates.
  • incidentAn unplanned event that disrupts a service or makes it worse for users, such as an outage, a big slowdown or a data problem, and that needs a quick response.
  • lateral movementThe way attackers move from the first compromised machine to other systems inside the same network, looking for valuable data or higher privileges.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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