Hacker Culture A to Z

Hacker Culture A to Z

by Kim Crawley
Released November 2023
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098145675

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Book description

Hacker culture can be esoteric, but this entertaining reference is here to help. Written by longtime cybersecurity researcher and writer Kim Crawley, this fun reference introduces you to key people and companies, fundamental ideas, and milestone films, games, and magazines in the annals of hacking. From airgapping to phreaking to zombie malware, grasping the terminology is crucial to understanding hacker culture and history.

If you're just getting started on your hacker journey, you'll find plenty here to guide your learning and help you understand the references and cultural allusions you come across. More experienced hackers will find historical depth, wry humor, and surprising facts about familiar cultural touchstones.

  • Understand the relationship between hacker culture and cybersecurity
  • Get to know the ideas behind the hacker ethos, like "knowledge should be free"
  • Explore topics and publications central to hacker culture, including 2600 Magazine
  • Appreciate the history of cybersecurity
  • Learn about key figures in the history of hacker culture
  • Understand the difference between hackers and cybercriminals

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Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. Conventions Used in This Book
    2. O’Reilly Online Learning
    3. How to Contact Us
    4. Acknowledgments
  2. 1. A
    1. Abacus
    2. Abandonware
    3. Activision
    4. Adleman, Leonard
    5. Advanced persistent threat (APT)
    6. Agile methodology
    7. Airgapping
    8. Akihabara, Tokyo
    9. Alderson, Elliot
    10. Alphabet Inc.
    11. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    12. AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
    13. Amiga
    14. Android operating system
    15. Anonymous
    16. Apache/Apache License
    17. Apple
    18. ARM (Advanced RISC Machines)
    19. ARPAnet
    20. Artificial intelligence (AI)
    21. Assange, Julian
    22. Assembly
    23. Atari
    24. Atlus
    25. Augmented and virtual reality
    26. Autistic
    27. AWS
    28. Azure
  3. 2. B
    1. Babbage, Charles
    2. Baer, Ralph
    3. bash
    4. BASIC
    5. BBS
    6. Bell Labs
    7. Berkeley, University of California
    8. Berners-Lee, Tim
    9. Binary
    10. BitTorrent
    11. Blockchain
    12. Botnet
    13. Bug
    14. Bulletin board systems (BBSes)
    15. Byte magazine
  4. 3. C
    1. Calce, Michael “MafiaBoy”
    2. Cama, Amat
    3. Captain Crunch (John Draper)
    4. Capture the Flag
    5. Carnegie Mellon University
    6. Carr, Iris
    7. The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1999 book)
    8. Certificates (cryptography)
    9. Certificates (professional credentials)
    10. ChatGPT
    11. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)
    12. CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability)
    13. CISSP
    14. C languages
    15. Cleartext
    16. Closed source software
    17. Cloud
    18. Comic-Con
    19. Commodore
    20. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)
    21. Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
    22. Copyleft
    23. CPU (Central processing unit)
    24. Cray, Seymour
    25. Creative Commons licenses
    26. Crunch time
    27. Cryptocurrency
    28. Cryptography
    29. Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc)
    30. Cyberpunk
    31. Cybersecurity
  5. 4. D
    1. Dark.Fail
    2. Dark Web/darknet
    3. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
    4. Data
    5. Da Vinci, Leonardo
    6. Debian
    7. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)
    8. Deep Web
    9. DEF CON
    10. Demoscene
    11. Denial-of-service (DoS, DDoS) attacks
    12. Developers
    13. DevOps
    14. Diffie, Whitfield
    15. Diffie-Hellman key exchange
    16. Disk, disc
    17. DOOM (video game)
    18. DOS (Disk Operating System)
    19. Draper, John
    20. Dread forums
    21. DRM (Digital Rights Management)
    22. Dungeons & Dragons (game franchise)
  6. 5. E
    1. Electronic Arts
    2. Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)
    3. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
    4. Electronics
    5. Emacs
    6. Email
    7. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
    8. Enigma
    9. “Ethical” hacking
    10. Exploit
  7. 6. F
    1. Facebook
    2. Fairchild Semiconductor
    3. Floppy disk
    4. Form factor
    5. Freenet
    6. Free Software Foundation (FSF)
    7. Freeware
    8. FUD
  8. 7. G
    1. Game Developers Conference (GDC)
    2. Gates, Bill
    3. Gibson, William
    4. Git/GitHub
    5. GNOME
    6. GNU (software collection)
    7. Go
    8. Goldstein, Emmanuel
    9. Google
    10. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
    11. Governance
    12. Graphical user interface (GUI)
  9. 8. H
    1. Hacker
    2. Hackers (1995 film)
    3. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (2010 book)
    4. Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE)
    5. Hacking Is Not a Crime
    6. Hack the Box
    7. Hacktivism
    8. Hak5
    9. Ham radio
    10. Hardware
    11. Hellman, Martin
    12. Hello World
    13. Hewlett-Packard (HP)
    14. Hexadecimal numbering
    15. Hidden Figures (2017 film)
    16. Homebrew Computer Club
    17. Hopper, Grace
    18. HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
  10. 9. I
    1. IBM
    2. Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST); Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)
    3. Industrial control systems
    4. Integrated development environment (IDE)
    5. Intel
    6. Intellectual property
    7. Internet
    8. Invisible Internet Project (I2P)
    9. IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
  11. 10. J
    1. Jack, Barnaby
    2. Jackson, Mary
    3. Java
    4. JavaScript
    5. Jobs, Steve
    6. Johnson, Katherine Coleman
    7. Joy, Bill
  12. 11. K
    1. Kali Linux
    2. Key
    3. Keyboard
  13. 12. L
    1. Lamarr, Hedy
    2. Larsson, Stieg
    3. Lawson, Jerry
    4. Levy, Steven
    5. Linux
    6. Lovelace, Ada
    7. LulzSec
  14. 13. M
    1. Macintosh
    2. macOS
    3. Malware
    4. Manning, Chelsea
    5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
    6. Meta
    7. Metasploit Framework
    8. Microcomputers
    9. Microsoft
    10. Minicomputers
    11. Mitnick, Kevin
    12. Miyamoto, Shigeru
    13. MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games
    14. Moore’s law
    15. Morse code
    16. Mr. Robot (TV show)
    17. MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)
    18. Multics
  15. 14. N
    1. Napster
    2. National Air and Space Administration (NASA)
    3. National Security Agency (NSA)
    4. Networking
    5. NeXT Computer
    6. Nihon Falcom
    7. Nintendo
    8. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs)
    9. NVIDIA
  16. 15. O
    1. OpenAI
    2. Open source
    3. Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP)
    4. Operating systems
    5. Operational security
  17. 16. P
    1. Packet switching
    2. Page, Larry
    3. PEBKAC
    4. Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks
    5. Penetration testing
    6. PGP
    7. Personal computers
    8. Phishing
    9. Phreaking
    10. Ping
    11. Piracy
    12. Pirate Bay/Pirate Party
    13. Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999 film)
    14. Pizza
    15. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
    16. Programming
    17. Proprietary software
    18. Proxy networks
    19. Python
  18. 17. Q
    1. Quantum computing
  19. 18. R
    1. Radio
    2. RadioShack
    3. Ramachandran, Vivek
    4. Ransomware
    5. Raspberry Pi
    6. README files
    7. Reddit
    8. Red Hat
    9. Ritchie, Dennis
    10. Rivest, Ron
    11. Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptography
    12. Robotics
    13. Roleplaying games (RPGs)
  20. 19. S
    1. Sakura, Futaba
    2. Salander, Lisbeth
    3. SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition)
    4. Schneier, Bruce
    5. Script kiddie
    6. Search engines
    7. Sega
    8. Semiconductors
    9. Shamir, Adi
    10. Shareware/freeware/abandonware
    11. Signal (messaging app)
    12. Silicon Valley
    13. Silk Road
    14. Smartphone
    15. Snowden, Edward
    16. Social media
    17. Spyware
    18. Stallman, Richard
    19. Stanford University
    20. Startups
    21. Steam
    22. Stuxnet
    23. Sun Microsystems
    24. Supercomputers
    25. Swartz, Aaron
    26. Syntax
  21. 20. T
    1. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
    2. Tech Model Railroad Club
    3. Telephones
    4. Texas Instruments
    5. Thompson, Ken
    6. Threat actor
    7. Timesharing
    8. Tokyo Denki University
    9. Tor (The Onion Router)
    10. Torvalds, Linus
    11. Tramiel, Jack
    12. Transistor
    13. Tribe of Hackers
    14. Turing, Alan
    15. 2600 (Twenty-Six Hundred): The Hacker Quarterly (magazine)
    16. Twitter
  22. 21. U
    1. UNIX
    2. Unreal Engine
    3. Usenet
  23. 22. V
    1. Valve
    2. Vaughan, Dorothy
    3. Version control
    4. vi
    5. Video games
    6. Virtual reality (VR)
    7. Virus
    8. VisiCalc
  24. 23. W
    1. Wardialing
    2. Wardriving
    3. WarGames (1983 film)
    4. Watch_Dogs (video game series)
    5. Waterloo, University of
    6. Whiteboard interviews
    7. Whitehat hackers
    8. WiFi
    9. WikiLeaks
    10. Wikipedia
    11. Windows
    12. WIRED magazine
    13. World War II
    14. World Wide Web
    15. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
    16. Worm
    17. Wozniak, Steve
    18. WYSIWYG
  25. 24. X
    1. Xbox
    2. Xerox
    3. Xfce
    4. Xiao Tian
  26. 25. Y
    1. Yahoo!
    2. Y Combinator
  27. 26. Z
    1. Zero day
    2. Zettabyte Era
    3. Zork
    4. Zuckerberg, Mark
  28. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Hacker Culture A to Z
  • Author(s): Kim Crawley
  • Release date: November 2023
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098145675