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

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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