Monday, February 18, 2002		Bits & Bytes

ACK: Short for acknowledgement code, a transmission control character used to indicate that a transmitted message was received uncorrupted or without errors or that the receiving station is ready to accept transmissions. The receiver sends the code to the sender to indicate that the transmission has been accepted.

NAK: Short for negative acknowledgement code, a transmission control character used to indicate that a transmitted message was received with errors or corrupted or that the receiving station is not ready to accept transmissions. The receiver sends the code to the sender to indicate that the transmission must be resent.

Virus signature: A unique string of bits, or the binary pattern, of a virus. The virus signature is like a fingerprint in that it can be used to detect and identify specific viruses. Anti-virus software uses the virus signature to scan for the presence of malicious code.