So I sit down in the reading area outside my VP’s office, and I pick up a copy of:

InformationAge Advisory Series
ENTERPRISE SECURITY
Sponsored By
(CA) Computer Associates

…a 50-page magazine pullout that discusses Understanding, Implementing and Managing Core Technologies.

I flip to the back, to the Security Speak glossary, and scanning the page encounter:

Exploit – A tool that automates a hack, typically taking advantage of a vulnerability in the targeted system. The first exploit was arguably ‘Crack’, an application for discovering the encrypted passwords of a Unix system.

Bwahahahahahhahahhahahaha….

I could be nitpicky and make a great deal out of the fact that to discover the encrypted passwords of a traditional Unix system, one merely had to type more /etc/passwd; being more mature than that I con’t help but wonder who came to this conclusion and who argued it, because I certainly remember having a variety of sploitz (not called, that, obviously) and recipes, at University back in the mid-1980s.

By whose metric am I the inventor of the 5pl017?