In contrast to Raymond, they usually reserve the term cracker for more malicious activity.

Intrusion prevention systems may also serve secondarily at the host level to deny potentially malicious activity.

AbuseHelper is an open framework for collecting and sharing intelligence on suspected malicious activity.

In addition to malicious activities, misconfigured hardware and leaks from private networks are also sources of background noise.

"All parts of the internet community are feeling the pressure to be more proactive in dealing with malicious activity," Verisign explained.

A lot of security software looks for malicious activity on a user's own machine, he said.

Fraud and impersonation are some of the malicious activities that occur due to the direct or indirect abuse of private information.

This malicious activity may be possible due to common web application weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

The hacker can then use this 'network' of computers to launch malicious activities.

Officials of the response team said there had been no reports of intruders using the stolen information for malicious or criminal activities.