ogy system that is yet unknown by the software makers and system administrators (often very difficult to identify).
4chan: An Internet message/image (bulletin)
board.
/b/: An electronic bulletin board.
Action Potential: After cell activation by a
stimulus, the following change in an electrical impulse along a plasma membrane (of a muscle or nerve) in the transmission of nerve signals.
Air Gap: A physical disconnection between
thought to be capable of protecting an information system against compromise.
Anarchy: The lack of a government. Ankle Biter: A neophyte, an amateur. Anomic: Alienated, without a sense of direc-
tion or meaning.
Anonymous: Not unidentified by name; with-
out distinguishing features; impersonal; unknown.
Backdoor: A way to illicitly access network
systems by bypassing normal authentication.
Blackhat Hacker: A hacker who hacks for
malicious reasons, usually to cause damage.
Civil Disobedience: Purposeful non-com-
pliance with select laws as a non-violent form of political expression or protest.
Costly Signal: An indicator of an organiza-
tion’s type by a particular action that his risky to the organization, often to prove its resolve to a cause and its capabilities (an antonym to a “costly signal” is a “cheap talk” signal, which is cost-free to provide).
Creed: A formal statement of beliefs. Cybotage: A form of cyber terrorism which
involves the disruption and destruction of infor- mation infrastructures, often for political aims.
Defacement: The purposeful harming of the
appearance of a website, often through digital graffiti.
Denial of Service (DOS) Attack: An attack
which involves the uses of many “drone” com- puters to request service from a targeted website to overwhelm their servers to deny the servers’ provision of services to potential users.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) At- tack: An attack that involves the takeover of many
“drone” computers (multiple attack systems) to request service from a targeted website with the purpose of taking the site down (leading to service outages from the target website).
Domain Name System: The underlying sys-
tem that links names of websites to their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, enabling the location of the site.
Dox: A verb that means to “document” or
identify the real people behind handles.
Drone: A machine that is remote-controlled;
an unthinking and unpiloted computer.
Exploit: A compromise of a computing ma-
chine.
Forensics: The study of evidence on computers
and digital storage media.
Gray Hat Hacker: A hacker who hacks com-
puters, software, and networks for both benevolent and malevolent reasons.
Hacker: A skilled person who breaks into
computing systems and computers—for any range of purposes.
Hacktivism (Hacker + Activism): The uses
of computers and computer networks to make political statements; a form of civil disobedi- ence using computers and computer networks; a portmanteau of hacker and activism; electronic civil disobedience.
Honeypot: A virtual trap designed to be at-
tacked by hackers in order to learn about hacker strategies, tools, identities, and behaviors (a “honey net” is a simulated network for the same purposes as a “honey pot”).
Hybrid Attack: A hacker attack that uses
multiple tactics to compromise systems.
Ideology: A set of ideas that may define goals,
values, and actions of a (often political) group.
Image Board (also Imageboard): A chan-
nel, an internet form that focuses on the posting of images.
Internet Protocol Address (IP): A unique
identifier to a particular computer connected to the Internet.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC): Real-time text
messaging application.
Key Logger: A malicious type of software that
may be used to “log” or record all the keystrokes of an individual using a computer, in order to ac- cess their private accounts and other information.
Kiddie Hack: A low-level hack using pub-
licly available tools (a derisive label indicating amateurism).
Libertarianism: A political philosophy that
promotes as little government as possible to enable individual free will and decision-making.
Lulz: The plural form of “lol” or “laugh out
loud”.
Manifesto: A public declaration of political
principles and values.
Meme: A unit of cultural transmission, which
may be ideas or practices or other forms.
Mercenary: An individual who sells his or
her skills for money.
Microblogging: The Web logging of short
messages usually limited to 140 characters, dis- tributed in real time to the various “followers” of a particular individual or group.
Mirroring: The preservation and copying of
a Web site in its original form.
Neologism: A newly created word.
Non-Propertarian Libertarianism: The
philosophy that true human liberty requires the absence of any authority; this belief system rejects any authority of private property to the detriment of others.
Pen (Penetration) Attack: Successful unau-
thorized access to a protected system resource, usually information.
Personally Identifiable Information (PII):
Information that serves as a unique identifier of an individual and can lead to a non-repudiatable naming of the person.
Phishing: An illegal elicitation of private
information by taking on a false identity through electronic communications.
Propaganda: Information designed to influ-
ence people in regards to a political issue; per- suasive communication to affect attitudes, ideas, and behaviors.
Pseudonymity: The maintenance of long-term
anonymity; the state of not being identifiable for a long period of time.
Random Walk: A probabilistic trajectory
based on observations and mathematical formu- las but which offer a range of indeterminacy; an expression of a stochastic process.
Script Kiddies: A derogatory term referring
to low-level hackers who are using simplistic methods.
Social Network: The connection of individuals
through socio-technical spaces online; a branch of network science that focuses on human power relationships and the exchanges of resources and information.
Spear Phishing: A targeted (a known individu-
al or organization) fraudulent elicitation of private information through electronic communications.
SQL Injection Attack (SQLIA): The input-
ting of SQL statements in a Web form to extract the database contents or to send other commands to the server.
Tag Cloud: A text analysis tool that enables
the display of words in a document or a website that calibrates the number of appearances of that word with the size of that word in a “tag cloud”; a type of visual informational-graphic.
Unique Identifier: A number or name that
uniquely categorizes a particular digital or other object.
Web Log (“Blog” as a Portmanteau of “Web Log”): A Web journal, usually focused around a
particular individual or personality, or topic.
Whitehat Hacker: A computer expert who
hacks into computer systems in order to find weaknesses so that they may be addressed with- out causing damage to the software maker or software users.
APPENDIX 1
Extrapolating the Ideologies of the Anonymous Hacker
Collective’s Spin-Offs: AntiSec and LulzSec
For virtual organizations that do not have a formal structure (except for the inner group of the leadership), very little research exists about how spinoffs occur. In this scenario, though, the Anonymous hacker collective has spun off two specialized organizations and movements in 2009 and 2011 respectively, some years after the organization initially became active with hacktivism in 2006: AntiSec and LulzSec.