Webster's New World Hacker Dictionary

by Bernadette H. Schell, Clemens Martin

The comprehensive hacker dictionary for security professionals, businesses, governments, legal professionals, and others dealing with cyberspace

Hackers. Crackers. Phreakers. Black hats. White hats. Cybercrime. Logfiles. Anonymous Digital Cash. ARP Redirect.

Cyberspace has a language all its own. Understanding it is vital if you're concerned about Internet security, national security, or even personal security. As recent events have proven, you don't have to own a computer to be the victim of cybercrime-crackers have accessed information in the records of large, respected organizations, institutions, and even the military.

This is your guide to understanding hacker terminology. It's up to date and comprehensive,
* Clear, concise, and accurate definitions of more than 875 hacker terms
* Entries spanning key information-technology security concepts, organizations, case studies, laws, theories, and tools
* Entries covering general terms, legal terms, legal cases, and people
* Suggested further reading for definitions

This unique book provides a chronology of hacker-related developments beginning with the advent of the computer and continuing through current events in what is identified as today's Fear of a Cyber-Apocalypse Era. An appendix entitled "How Do Hackers Break into Computers?" details some of the ways crackers access and steal information.

Knowledge is power. With this dictionary, you're better equipped to be a white hat and guard against cybercrime.

Genres: Reference

432 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2006

Reviews

[D351 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much pro-RIAA, pro-MPAA propaganda, too much "crackers are potential terrorists" propaganda, and nowhere near enough actual hacking terms, just (often out of date, or never passed) legal yammering. Several terms, notably "NOP sled", are used but appear to warrant no entry of their own while "copyright law" gets a full page of text. The entries about varying laws that apply to computer hacking are of interest, but are not balanced by near enough entries on the technical issues of hacking. And as for cultural terms, there aren't any. You will not see any of the cute hacker slang that you get in The New Hacker Dictionary, which is unfortunately increasingly out of date, as is the nature of the culture. Over all, this book barely touches on anything technical (excepting the introduction and appendices which were actually quite good) and lingers on the supposed lost profits of the movie/music industry then any remaining pages serve as advertisements for specific software products. I get the distinct impression that the majority of the decision-making was done by someone with absolutely no interest in hacking and a whole lot of interest on making their bosses happy with the spin and marketing that make up the majority of this text. Oh and one more thing, despite mentioning Freedom Downtime, the writer appear to clearly have not watched it, as they continue to avoid the less demonizing aspects of the Kevin Mitnick story. This pattern of lazy pseudo-journalism seems to continue throughout the book, so I recommend taking any opinions in this book with a huge chunk of salt.