[ISN] Ankit Fadia - "Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking" 32% Plagiarized

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 15:33:19 -0600 (CST)
http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/unofficial.html

Sat Jan 1 01:08:44 CST 2011

Ankit Fadia's career is built on the cornerstone of him writing a 
'hacking' book when he was 14, which he used as a means of establishing 
his expertise on the subject of computer security. Since the book 
'Unofficial Guide to Ethical Hacking' (ISBN 0333 93679 5) was published 
in 2001, Fadia has not been able to keep sales figures straight [1].

    .. the author, ankit fadia, who at the tender age of 14 wrote this 
    book, is the youngest author for macmillan india limited in their 
    110 years of history.

    At 15, his book on Ethical Hacking made him the youngest author to 
    be published by Macmillan India.

    Even his parents and siblings weren't aware how tech-savvy Ankit was 
    till he surprised everyone by writing his first book on ethical 
    hacking at 14.

    By fourteen years he published his first book titled The Unofficial 
    Guide to Ethical Hacking which became an instant bestseller 
    worldwide, sold 3 million copies and was translated into 11 
    languages.

The book was clearly written by a 14 year old and did not enjoy the 
benefit of an editor or technical editor (even as of the 6th 
reprinting). Countless misspellings, technical errors, repeated material 
and a high level of disorganization make the book difficult to use even 
as a reference. The book attempts to dismiss some of this in a 
"Publisher's Note" saying "Many words in this book have been spelt in 
the manner that the author is comfortable with and is retained in 
respect to the inexhaustible spirit of enterprise and adventure of the 
generation X." While words such as 'kewl' are understood in this 
context, it does not cover words like 'bascially', 'ubehackers' or 
'stricted' [sic].

The book is comprised of many articles written by Fadia for his web 
site, and later used with minor edits for the book. Throughout the book, 
there are over a dozen cases of Fadia using material that he did not 
write. In some cases, he quietly removes headers or text that would give 
attribution. In others, he blatantly claims credit for writing something 
he did not. In addition, almost 130 pages at the end of the book are 
blatantly taken from other sources, sometimes without attribution or 
honoring explicit copyright statements. This flagrant plagiarism 
advertised as original work launched his career and now leads to him 
receiving five-figure speaking engagements [2].

[1] http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/ankit_fadia/fadia10.html
[2] http://gdaspotlight.com/bio.asp/Speaker/Ankit_Fadia

[...]


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Received on Sat Jan 01 2011 - 13:33:19 PST

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