World's No. 1 hacker

A recently published e-book penned by the self-proclaimed “world's No. 1 hacker” is rocking the security community with back-and-forth allegations of plagiarism, racism, and even threats against a security podcaster and his family.

How to Become the World's No. 1 Hacker is purportedly written by Gregory D. Evans, an animated felon who went on to become CEO of Ligatt Security International, a publicly traded company worth about 0.0002 cent per share that bills itself as a full-service computer security firm. Released by the obscure Cyber Crime Media publishing house, the 342-page PDF is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for consumers who want to learn how to harden their networks against attackers. Unix security, Wi-Fi cracking, and web service configuration are all covered.

But it turns out that huge chunks of the book weren't written by Evans at all, even though no other authors are credited. For instance, virtually all of Chapter 12 – 5,894 words, to be exact – is identical to this tutorial on port scanning written by Armando Romeo and published on the hackerscenter.com website in early 2008. And 1,750 words found in Chapter 9 were lifted fromthis manual posted to ethicalhacker.net, including screenshots that make reference to Chris Gates, the original author.

In all, at least 13 of the e-book's 26 chapters were lifted almost entirely word-for-word from other sources without attribution, according to this analysis from Ben Rothke, a senior security consultant for a professional services firm, who ran the portions through iThenticate, an online tool for spotting plagiarism. Other sources that were used without credit include Security Focus, Auditmypc.com, and Squidoo.com.

“Mr Evans has never asked any permission from me and I'm the only owner of the copyrights of my website,” said Armando Romeo, CEO of eLearnSecurity who says in all five Chapters in How to Become the World's No. 1 Hacker “have been literally copied and pasted from my guides” on the Hacker Center website. He added that this is the second run-in he's had with Evans, who regularly appears on local and national TV shows to talk about computer security.

Chris Gates and Donald Donzal, the author and editor respectively of the articles on the Ethical Hacker site, are also steadfast that Evans never had permission to use their content, which was first published published in 2007. Donzal said he's in the process of filing a take-down demand under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Evans – who in 2002 was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud – has vociferously defended his use of the previously published articles. In an interview withThe Register, he said he began work on the book in 2008, and largely drew on ghost writers who by contract agreed to submit “original content.” He insisted the submissions were vetted for authenticity by a service he declined to name. But he nonetheless went on to challenge the authors who have stepped forward to complain their work has been misappropriated.

“What you're doing is you're saying Greg, you put other people's stuff in your book, but if I go out on the internet, you cannot tell me who owns those other people's stuff,” he said. “All you're doing is you're telling me that who owns a website where other people publish at that website, but they're not the owners of the content.”