Dictionary of Information Security

B

B1FF fictional character, possibly created by Joe Talmadge,

originally used or referred to in Usenet news post-

ings, portraying the stereotypical “newbie” (novice

or newcomer) on the Net, generally a blackhat

wannabe. Postings from B1FF typically use capital

letters, deliberately misspell words, and replace letters

with non-alphabetic characters (dudes=D00Dz).

Because such people tend to claim “!33t” (elite)

status, !33t has come to replace B1FF in more recent

writings, although there are many variations in

spelling for both terms. B1FF is probably the pre-

ferred one, since it looks like hexadecimal represen-

tation. No relation to the biff mail notification

utility.

back door see backdoor

backdoor hidden software or hardware mechanism that

can be tr