Hackerspeak

See also: Patois | Sayings | People And Personae | Hacker | Cracker

AKA: BrEeEzAh (from the Bacardi Breezer drink)

  1. Terms used by hacker community
  2. Text reformatted to look similar to its original language but using different characters

Contents

1. Terms used by the hacker community

  • Sploit – short for “exploit,” software that will cause harm to a vulnerable program
  • Zero day – a ‘sploit’ very recently discovered
  • Spoofing (see page)
  • Sniff – to look at information passing through a network
  • SATAN – originally a network attack system, now a legitimate system-audit tool used by most security-consious admins. O’Reilly publishing even wrote a book about it
  • Smurf – a variation on spoofing

There are a variety of other terms including:

Although most hackers consider themselves above warez, this term is also considered hackerspeak because, while most words have a core word from which they come, most hackerspeak was created by adolescents and therefore reference much more modern origins.

2. Reformatted text

Replacing normal characters with similar-looking alternates.

Examples

  • very good to hear would translate to: v3ry g00d 2 h33r
  • no bad news about the car would translate to: .n0 bad n3w5 ab0ut ht3 k@r.

Purpose

Preventing search

by preventing a search of text for dangerous words

Making one’s self less visible when communicating on the Internet, especially with e-mail reading tools like Carnivore and commercial services like Google. The format can also vary wildly with W’s appearing as // (a series of slashes) or “S” appearing as “$”, among others.
This change-of-text can go to very strong extremes with whole new languages based around keyboard characters. Hackerspeak, like many languages, may one day have its own dialects and cultural variations. This communication could be in any range of complexity due to the assumed language-adept, high-intelligence of most hackers.
Some users of reformatted text are considered to be script kiddies while the 3l33t3 use cryptography to be obscure. While some Hackers consider Hackerspeak moronic or childish, the phenominon is not limited to a few people or one sector. As information is power, keeping your communications secure through obscurity can be wise.

Anti-censorship

  • MSN doesn’t allow certain words like “Microsoft Word” when listing serial numbers. Using Micros0ft or Micr0soft does work.
  • Many chats that prohibit cussing but can be defeated with fuc|< and $hi+.

Use in Passwords

Because there is no dictionary for hackerspeak and its use is sufficiently random, it can be used for most passwords, as long as the core word is not predictable, such as a play on your name or one of the above-listed hacker terms like “sploit” and “smurf.”

Variation: Mixed-up inner words

Quote from Slashdot article:
‘Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. ceehiro.’
A perl script is available to convert text into an unsearchable mess.

Related

TakeDown.NET -> “Hackerspeak”