Hacker Culture A to Z: A Fun Guide to the People, Ideas, and Gadgets That Made the Tech World

Copyright....3

Table of Contents....6

Preface....8

Conventions Used in This Book....9

O’Reilly Online Learning....9

How to Contact Us....10

Acknowledgments....10

Chapter 1. A....12

Abacus....12

Abandonware....13

Activision....13

Adleman, Leonard....14

Advanced persistent threat (APT)....15

Agile methodology....16

Airgapping....16

Akihabara, Tokyo....17

Alderson, Elliot....18

Alphabet Inc.....19

Amazon Web Services (AWS)....19

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)....20

Amiga....20

Android operating system....21

Anonymous....22

Apache/Apache License....23

Apple....24

ARM (Advanced RISC Machines)....26

ARPAnet....27

Artificial intelligence (AI)....28

Assange, Julian....28

Assembly....30

Atari....32

Atlus....34

Augmented and virtual reality....35

Autistic....36

AWS....37

Azure....37

Chapter 2. B....40

Babbage, Charles....40

Baer, Ralph....40

bash....41

BASIC....42

BBS....42

Bell Labs....42

Berkeley, University of California....43

Berners-Lee, Tim....44

Binary....46

BitTorrent....47

Blockchain....47

Botnet....47

Bug....47

Bulletin board systems (BBSes)....48

Byte magazine....49

Chapter 3. C....50

Calce, Michael “MafiaBoy”....50

Cama, Amat....51

Captain Crunch (John Draper)....52

Capture the Flag....53

Carnegie Mellon University....54

Carr, Iris....55

The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1999 book)....55

Certificates (cryptography)....56

Certificates (professional credentials)....57

ChatGPT....58

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)....60

CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability)....60

CISSP....61

C languages....61

Cleartext....61

Closed source software....62

Cloud....62

Comic-Con....63

Commodore....64

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)....66

Consumer Electronics Show (CES)....67

Copyleft....68

CPU (Central processing unit)....68

Cray, Seymour....69

Creative Commons licenses....69

Crunch time....70

Cryptocurrency....71

Cryptography....73

Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc)....76

Cyberpunk....77

Cybersecurity....78

Chapter 4. D....80

Dark.Fail....80

Dark Web/darknet....80

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)....81

Data....83

Da Vinci, Leonardo....83

Debian....85

DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)....86

Deep Web....87

DEF CON....88

Demoscene....89

Denial-of-service (DoS, DDoS) attacks....90

Developers....91

DevOps....91

Diffie, Whitfield....92

Diffie-Hellman key exchange....93

Disk, disc....94

DOOM (video game)....94

DOS (Disk Operating System)....94

Draper, John....96

Dread forums....96

DRM (Digital Rights Management)....97

Dungeons & Dragons (game franchise)....98

Chapter 5. E....102

Electronic Arts....102

Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)....103

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)....104

Electronics....104

Emacs....106

Email....107

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)....107

Enigma....109

“Ethical” hacking....109

Exploit....110

Chapter 6. F....112

Facebook....112

Fairchild Semiconductor....112

Floppy disk....114

Form factor....115

Freenet....115

Free Software Foundation (FSF)....116

Freeware....116

FUD....116

Chapter 7. G....118

Game Developers Conference (GDC)....118

Gates, Bill....118

Gibson, William....121

Git/GitHub....121

GNOME....122

GNU (software collection)....123

Go....123

Goldstein, Emmanuel....123

Google....123

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)....125

Governance....126

Graphical user interface (GUI)....126

Chapter 8. H....128

Hacker....128

Hackers (1995 film)....129

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (2010 book)....130

Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE)....131

Hacking Is Not a Crime....131

Hack the Box....132

Hacktivism....132

Hak5....133

Ham radio....133

Hardware....135

Hellman, Martin....135

Hello World....137

Hewlett-Packard (HP)....138

Hexadecimal numbering....140

Hidden Figures (2017 film)....141

Homebrew Computer Club....143

Hopper, Grace....143

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)....145

Chapter 9. I....146

IBM....146

Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST); Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)....148

Industrial control systems....150

Integrated development environment (IDE)....150

Intel....151

Intellectual property....152

Internet....152

Invisible Internet Project (I2P)....153

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)....154

Chapter 10. J....156

Jack, Barnaby....156

Jackson, Mary....157

Java....157

JavaScript....157

Jobs, Steve....157

Johnson, Katherine Coleman....160

Joy, Bill....160

Chapter 11. K....162

Kali Linux....162

Key....163

Keyboard....164

Chapter 12. L....166

Lamarr, Hedy....166

Larsson, Stieg....167

Lawson, Jerry....167

Levy, Steven....168

Linux....168

Lovelace, Ada....171

LulzSec....173

Chapter 13. M....174

Macintosh....174

macOS....174

Malware....174

Manning, Chelsea....175

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)....177

Meta....178

Metasploit Framework....180

Microcomputers....180

Microsoft....181

Minicomputers....183

Mitnick, Kevin....183

Miyamoto, Shigeru....185

MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games....186

Moore’s law....186

Morse code....187

Mr. Robot (TV show)....188

MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)....189

Multics....189

Chapter 14. N....190

Napster....190

National Air and Space Administration (NASA)....190

National Security Agency (NSA)....190

Networking....190

NeXT Computer....191

Nihon Falcom....191

Nintendo....192

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs)....193

NVIDIA....195

Chapter 15. O....196

OpenAI....196

Open source....196

Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP)....197

Operating systems....198

Operational security....198

Chapter 16. P....200

Packet switching....200

Page, Larry....201

PEBKAC....202

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks....202

Penetration testing....203

PGP....203

Personal computers....203

Phishing....205

Phreaking....205

Ping....206

Piracy....207

Pirate Bay/Pirate Party....208

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999 film)....209

Pizza....210

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)....210

Programming....211

Proprietary software....211

Proxy networks....212

Python....212

Chapter 17. Q....214

Quantum computing....214

Chapter 18. R....216

Radio....216

RadioShack....216

Ramachandran, Vivek....217

Ransomware....218

Raspberry Pi....218

README files....219

Reddit....219

Red Hat....220

Ritchie, Dennis....221

Rivest, Ron....221

Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptography....222

Robotics....223

Roleplaying games (RPGs)....224

Chapter 19. S....226

Sakura, Futaba....226

Salander, Lisbeth....226

SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition)....227

Schneier, Bruce....227

Script kiddie....228

Search engines....228

Sega....228

Semiconductors....230

Shamir, Adi....230

Shareware/freeware/abandonware....230

Signal (messaging app)....231

Silicon Valley....231

Silk Road....232

Smartphone....233

Snowden, Edward....234

Social media....235

Spyware....235

Stallman, Richard....236

Stanford University....237

Startups....238

Steam....238

Stuxnet....239

Sun Microsystems....240

Supercomputers....240

Swartz, Aaron....242

Syntax....243

Chapter 20. T....246

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)....246

Tech Model Railroad Club....247

Telephones....248

Texas Instruments....249

Thompson, Ken....249

Threat actor....250

Timesharing....250

Tokyo Denki University....252

Tor (The Onion Router)....252

Torvalds, Linus....253

Tramiel, Jack....254

Transistor....254

Tribe of Hackers....254

Turing, Alan....255

2600 (Twenty-Six Hundred): The Hacker Quarterly (magazine)....257

Twitter....259

Chapter 21. U....260

UNIX....260

Unreal Engine....260

Usenet....261

Chapter 22. V....264

Valve....264

Vaughan, Dorothy....264

Version control....264

vi....264

Video games....265

Virtual reality (VR)....265

Virus....265

VisiCalc....267

Chapter 23. W....268

Wardialing....268

Wardriving....268

WarGames (1983 film)....268

Watch_Dogs (video game series)....269

Waterloo, University of....269

Whiteboard interviews....270

Whitehat hackers....270

WiFi....270

WikiLeaks....271

Wikipedia....271

Windows....272

WIRED magazine....272

World War II....272

World Wide Web....272

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)....273

Worm....273

Wozniak, Steve....274

WYSIWYG....276

Chapter 24. X....278

Xbox....278

Xerox....278

Xfce....279

Xiao Tian....279

Chapter 25. Y....282

Yahoo!....282

Y Combinator....283

Chapter 26. Z....284

Zero day....284

Zettabyte Era....284

Zork....285

Zuckerberg, Mark....285

About the Author....287

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