Spam
The term commonly used to describe the abundance of unsolicited bulk email which plagues the mailboxes of Internet users worldwide. The statistics vary over time, but suggest that over 70% of email traffic currently falls into this category.1)
Bugs
These are software errors which, when they crop up, can kill off your software immediately, if you're lucky. They can also result in data corruption, security weaknesses, and spurious, hard-to-find problems.
Denials of service
Denial-of-service attacks, or DoS attacks,2 starve legitimate usage of resources or services. For example, a DoS attack could use up all available disk space on a system, so that other users couldn't make use of it; generating reams of network traffic so that real traffic can't get through would also be a denial of service. Simple DoS attacks are relatively easy to mount by simply overwhelming a machine with requests, as a toddler might overwhelm their parents with questions. Sophisticated DoS attacks can involve more finesse, and may trick a machine into shutting a service down instead of flooding it.
Malicious software
The real war is waged with malicious software, or malware. This is software whose intent is malicious, or whose effect is malicious. The spectrum of malware covers a wide variety of specific threats, including viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and spyware.
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