21 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
21 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
tiger team
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n. [U.S. military jargon] 1. Originally, a team (of sneaker s) whose purpose
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is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are
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paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs
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saying bomb in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes saying
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Your codebooks have been stolen (they usually haven't been) inside safes,
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etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows
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up the next morning for a security review and finds the sign, note, etc.,
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and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead
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to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the patch
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entry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official
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inspection team or special firefighting group called in to look at a
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problem. A subset of tiger teams are professional cracker s, testing the
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security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via
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networks or supposedly secure comm channels. Some of their escapades, if
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declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The
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term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more
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specific sense.
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