Spyware
nounid
4216·updated May 9, 2026verified
Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system to gather information on individuals or organizations without their knowledge; a type of malicious code.
Attested in
No recorded attestations. They are written when an MWE tagging stage is completed, stamped with the pack version and the document’s digest.
Classifications
Entity Type
Threat90%rule-basedr:entity.threat.attack.v1
Sensitivity
unclassified
Information Class
unclassified
Variants
- plural
- Spywares
- possessive
- Spyware's
- pluralpossessive
- Spywares'
Framework definitions
National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers and Studies (NICCS) Cybersecurity Lexicon1 senseview framework →
- §1
- Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system without the knowledge of the system user or owner.
- §1
- Software whose purpose is to monitor a computer user’s actions (e.g., web sites visited) and report these actions to a third party, without the informed consent of that machine’s owner or legitimate user Scope Note: A particularly malicious form of spyware is software that monitors keystrokes to obtain passwords or otherwise gathers sensitive information such as credit card numbers, which it then transmits to a malicious third party. The term has also come to refer more broadly to software that subverts the computer’s operation for the benefit of a third party.
- §1
- Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system to gather information on individuals or organizations without their knowledge; a type of malicious code.
- §1
- Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system to gather information on individuals or organizations without their knowledge; a type of malicious code.
- §1
- Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system to gather information on individuals or organizations without their knowledge; a type of malicious code.
- §1
- computer software that obtains information from a user's computer without the user's knowledge or consent
- §1 · legacy_primary
- Software that is secretly or surreptitiously installed into an information system to gather information on individuals or organizations without their knowledge; a type of malicious code.DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column
Outgoing relationships
- related
- Noun #3097
Incoming relationships
- related
- ←Key Loggernoun
- ←antispyware softwarenoun