Introduction
I am a big fan of Cory Doctorow (@doctorow). Not only his books Little Brother, Homeland, and now Attack Surface discuss important topics like online privacy and the role of technology in today’s world, but also they educate the readers by telling them stories about modern tech solutions and tools. Doctorow usually doesn’t give you a lot of explanations, assuming that you can find all the necessary information if you want to.
When I started reading Attack Surface I was amazed by the amount of tech terms Doctorow was using here and there. I thought about some terms: “Okay, I know what ‘Tor’ means, but does everybody else who is reading this book now?” Other terms I had to google myself: “What is IMSI-catcher?”
I thought it might be a good idea to collect all tech terms that might be new to the readers and give a quick explanation for each of them. Also a link or two to more detailed pages would be helpful.
This is my collection of Attack Surface terms. Most of the time I give links to Wikipedia, sometimes to other resources.
If you want to add, correct, or expand some terms or add more interesting links, feel free to open issues in my Github repo (https://github.com/pavelanni/attack-surface-tech) or fork it and and open a PR. I’ll be happy to include your additions to this list.
- Cory Doctorow’s page: https://craphound.com/
- Attack Surface page: https://craphound.com/category/attacksurface/
- Little Brother and Homeland (two previous books of this trilogy): https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/ and https://craphound.com/category/homeland/
Here I collected the terms chapter-by-chapter. There is also an alphabetical reference.