Browse Definitions :
Definition

leet speak (leet)

Leet speak, also known as hackspeak or simply leet, is the substitution of a word's letters with numbers or special characters. "Leet" is derived from the word "elite," which refers to the hackers who originally turned leet speak into a sort of cult language in the 1980s. Over time, the label "leet" has broadened to include any term used by programmers that is a mystery to everyone else.

In traditional leet speak, characters and combinations of characters are often chosen to resemble the letters they replace so the resulting word is visually similar. Many people remember learning that when 0.7734 is entered into a calculator and looked at upside down, the numbers appear to spell the word hello. Leet speak is a somewhat similar concept; for example the word hacker in leet speak might look like this: |-|@k3r.

Although leet is human-readable (albeit with some difficulty), it is difficult for a computer to decode. For this reason, a spammer might use leet speak to bypass text parsers and encrypt unsolicted email. Spam filtering programs have become good at detecting leet speak in subject lines and rejecting e-mail messages that contain it, but they often have less success detecting it in e-mail text.

Leet speak is sometimes used to conceal the content of an online conversation from authorities, but it is also used sometimes just for the fun of it. For example, "pwn" is a leet that became a popular internet meme. It's thought that the leet probably originated from a typo when, in the excitement of a decisive win over an opponent, a gamer mistyped "own" and instead sent the message "Now I pwn you!"

Today, many people use leet to create strong passwords that are easy for the originator to remember, but difficult for intruders to steal with a dictionary attack. Text that combines letters and numerals is sometimes called alphanumerish.

This was last updated in August 2016

Continue Reading About leet speak (leet)

Networking
  • firewall as a service (FWaaS)

    Firewall as a service (FWaaS), also known as a cloud firewall, is a service that provides cloud-based network traffic analysis ...

  • private 5G

    Private 5G is a wireless network technology that delivers 5G cellular connectivity for private network use cases.

  • NFVi (network functions virtualization infrastructure)

    NFVi (network functions virtualization infrastructure) encompasses all of the networking hardware and software needed to support ...

Security
  • virus (computer virus)

    A computer virus is a type of malware that attaches itself to a program or file. A virus can replicate and spread across an ...

  • Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)

    Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) is an advanced certification that indicates that an individual possesses the ...

  • cryptography

    Cryptography is a method of protecting information and communications using codes, so that only those for whom the information is...

CIO
  • B2B (business to business)

    B2B (business-to-business) is a type of commerce involving the exchange of products, services or information between businesses, ...

  • return on investment (ROI)

    Return on investment (ROI) is a crucial financial metric investors and businesses use to evaluate an investment's efficiency or ...

  • big data as a service (BDaaS)

    Big data as a service (BDaS) is the delivery of data platforms and tools by a cloud provider to help organizations process, ...

HRSoftware
  • talent acquisition

    Talent acquisition is the strategic process an organization uses to identify, recruit and hire the people it needs to achieve its...

  • human capital management (HCM)

    Human capital management (HCM) is a comprehensive set of practices and tools used for recruiting, managing and developing ...

  • Betterworks

    Betterworks is performance management software that helps workforces and organizations to improve manager effectiveness and ...

Customer Experience
  • martech (marketing technology)

    Martech (marketing technology) refers to the integration of software tools, platforms, and applications designed to streamline ...

  • transactional marketing

    Transactional marketing is a business strategy that focuses on single, point-of-sale transactions.

  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

Close