Why Offensive Security Needs Engineering Textbooks: Or, How to Avoid a Replay of “Crypto Wars” in Security Research

Offensive security—or, in plain English, the practice of ­exploitation—has greatly enhanced our understanding of what it means for computers to be trustworthy. Having grown from hacker conventions that fit into a single room into a distinct engineering discipline in all but the name, offensive computing has so far been content with a jargon and an informal “hacker curriculum.” Now that it is unmistakably an industry, and an engineering specialization, it faces the challenge of defining itself as one, in a language that is understood beyond its own confines—most importantly, by makers of law and policy.