Fighting malware and spam

Path

List of folders to search for programs

The path, or search path, is a list of locations in which a computer system will search for programs. Thus, if a user types in 'notepad.exe', the system will look in each folder in the path list until it finds a file of that name, and execute it.

Companion viruses sometimes make use of this functionality to get their code executed, by placing files with common names ahead of the genuine file in the path.