taint Hear it!

taint Definition

taint (tānt)

transitive verb

    1. to affect with something physically injurious, unpleasant, etc.; infect, poison, etc.
    2. to affect with putrefaction or decay; spoil
  2. to make morally corrupt
  3. Obsolete to sully or stain

Etymology: prob. a merging of ME taynten, to touch (aphetic < ataynten, attaint) + Anglo-Fr teinter, to color < teint, pp. of OFr teindre < L tingere, to wet, moisten: see tinge

intransitive verb

to become tainted

noun

  1. a trace of corruption, disgrace, evil, etc.
  2. an infectious or contaminating trace; infection, decay, etc.

taint Synonyms

taint

v.

  1. To pollute

    spoil, infect, rot; see contaminate, decay.

  2. To corrupt

    deprave, debase, defile; see corrupt 1. See syn. study at contaminate.

Taint Hacker Definition

Each system component cannot fully validate input. The concept of taint, therefore, is to mark particular inputs as having been entered by the user. Then, only a thorough deconstructing and reconstructing of the information can remove the taint. Although some programming languages such as Perl automate this kind of tracking, other languages such as C need manual tracking.

Related to vulnerabilities used by crackers to break into systems; weak or insufficient validation of user input. Far too often, programmers expect that users will enter proper input. This leads to another problem: Programmers tend to omit critical system components to check for malicious users taking special care to craft input designed to exploit a system.The issue with input validation is that software system components reading and interpreting the input just do not know enough to properly validate it.

See Also: Crackers; Programming Languages C, C++, Perl, and Java; Perl.

Graham, R. Hacking Lexicon. [Online, 2001.] Robert Graham Website. http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resource_files/documentation/hacking-dict.html.

taint Usage Examples

Object

  • defense: Material factor defenses Is the defense tainted by discrimination?
  • air: The rich smell of decay tainted the warm air.

Converse of object

remove: Let us remove the taint which poisons the very spring of our religious thought.

Subject

  • discrimination: Back to top I s the study tainted by sex discrimination?
  • sin: As long as we are tainted by sin, we cannot see God.
  • association: Any views - however reasonable these may in themselves be - taken up by the BNP will be tainted by association.
  • fact: My view of him is tainted by the fact that he half believed the accusations in the first Moscow Trial.

Adjective modifier

slight: Of the gaming slight taint the were naturally among not about avoiding failures.

Modifying Another Word

  • forever: Elektra broke free of their control and fled Japan, but she was forever tainted by the darkness of the Hand.
  • somewhat: The secular, mundane world becomes not only trifling, but those concerned with it, somewhat tainted.
  • always: Implicit in CRC's protocol is the idea that tobacco money is always tainted.
  • still: Hungary, where the appointment of state broadcasting chiefs is still tainted?
  • not: They're not tainted by the larger industry they're involved in.

Noun used with modifier

  • cork: The cork industry have done a huge amount of work to find the causes of cork taint.
  • boar: However, if slaughter weights are less than 100kg live weight, only a small percentage of entire males have the abhorrent boar taint.

Preposition: with

sin: I enjoy God because what I am experiencing now is but for a short period of time and is tainted with sin.

Preposition: by

  • discrimination: Back to top I s the study tainted by sex discrimination?
  • sin: As long as we are tainted by sin, we cannot see God.
  • association: The whole profession could not escape taint by association.
  • fact: My view of him is tainted by the fact that he half believed the accusations in the first Moscow Trial.

Browse dictionary entries near taint

  1. ‹ Taino
  2. ‹ Taine
  3. ‹ Tainan
  4. ‹ Taimyr Peninsula
  5. ‹ tailstock
  6. ‹ tailspin
  7. ‹ tailrace
  8. ‹ tailpipe
  9. ‹ tailpiece
  10. ‹ tailoring
  1. tainted ›
  2. tainted evidence ›
  3. taipan ›
  4. Taipei ›
  5. Taiping ›
  6. Taiwan ›
  7. Taiwan Strait ›
  8. Taiwan Weighted Index ›
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