ALI JAHANGIRI▊
- ALIAS
- "Dr. Ali Jahangiri" — the title travels everywhere; the university that granted it appears nowhere, per attrition.org's review of his public materials ATTRIBUTED
- OPERATION
- Live Hacking (book · bootable CD · workshops) · The Security Policy Cookbook · Computer Networking Handbook
- HABITAT
- Training workshops and lecture circuits — "more than 1,000 hours of training per year," by his own site's count, as quoted by attrition.org SELF-PUBLISHED
- CREDENTIAL
- "Doctorate in science in Information Technology Management," December 2005, per his own bio — institution unnamed in his public materials, per attrition.org ATTRIBUTED
- STATUS
- TRAIL COLD — the research file's status column reads "Unknown"; the record ends with the 2011 analyses
The specimen, observed 2009–2011 across self-publishing platforms and training workshops, marketed fourteen years of experience at $49.95 a copy — $150 if you wanted the PDF. The taxonomists at attrition.org ran the pages through Google.
What you are about to witness is the assembly of an expert from purchased parts: a title with no university attached, an award shelf stocked with invitations to its own seminar, and a catalog of books that other people wrote first. The display is complete. The provenance is the mystery.
The field checked the provenance. That is why the archive exists. Every event below carries its receipt. Both sides get the microphone.
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE CATALOG (2009–2010)
First the display structure: a book, a bootable CD, a workshop circuit. Note the adjectives arriving before the fieldwork — in this species they always do.
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OCT 2009
Live Hacking ships
Live Hacking: The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Techniques & Countermeasures for Ethical Hackers & IT Security Experts — 214 pages, $49.95. His own marketing: "a world-renowned information technology (IT) expert, brings us the next must-have in IT training … Groundbreaking, insightful, and practical." His claims, presented as his claims.
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FEB 2010
The CD, and the first peer review
The Live Hacking CD releases — a bootable pen-testing distribution entering a field BackTrack already owned. Challenged by attrition.org on Twitter, Jahangiri replies: "Live Hacking CD is much easier than BackTrack and its tools are updated." Wesley McGrew runs the comparison and concludes: "Outside of the classroom, Backtrack 4 is a much better choice."
The reply is the tell. Not a spec sheet, not a benchmark — "much easier." In the wild, ease is what a predator advertises to prey, not to peers.
ACT II — THE AUDIT (AUG 2010)
Then the field arrives, carrying Google and a physical copy of the book. Audits in this field are conducted in percentages, chapter by chapter, with the original sources named.
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AUG 7 2010
The Cookbook table
Attrition.org publishes its chapter-by-chapter analysis of The Security Policy Cookbook: 28 of 32 chapters at 100% plagiarism, traced to the Texas Department of Information Resources, universities, and other freely available public documents. The book was marketed as "based on the 14 years of experience of its author" and "more than two years" of study. Attrition's characterization, theirs not ours: selling 141 pages of freely available policies without disclosure "is fraud," and charging $150 for the electronic version "is far from ethical."
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AUG 7 2010
Live Hacking gets the same treatment
The Live Hacking book's sample chapter goes through the same Google queries: sections found 95–100% identical to Wikipedia, OWASP, the nmap book, and tool home pages. The sections that appear original, per attrition, arrive with their own tells — "Rouge Access Point Attack" cleared spell check; no technical editor caught it.
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AUG 8 2010
The public-presence review
Attrition reviews the persona itself, expressly as opinion: seven "Awards & Honors" that are invitations to teach his own class; a Marquis Who's Who listing (Ben Rothke's note: Marquis-type firms "accept nearly everyone who applies, including serial killers"); a doctorate dated December 2005 with no institution named anywhere; a résumé released only to vetted requesters; one pending US patent application that attrition compares to Microsoft's already-fielded COFEE tool.
Observe the award shelf closely. Seven of the trophies are mirrors.
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AUG 2010
The three stories
Asked about the Cookbook, Jahangiri responds by e-mail, per attrition: he developed policies for clients over the last ten years; he subcontracted foreign companies to develop them; he purchased them as a template set in 2005, with rights. Attrition notes some of the copied policies had been published by others as early as 2002 — so either his vendor sold him plagiarized material he never verified, or, in attrition's words, "his claim is an outright lie."
ACT III — THE SHELF CLEARS (2010–2011)
Consequences in publishing arrive quietly: a listing disappears, a percentage is published, a Twitter account winks out. No courtroom. Just subtraction.
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2011
Barnes & Noble pulls the book
Per attrition.org's tumblr, BN.com removes The Security Policy Cookbook from sale over the plagiarism. The retailer says nothing publicly; the listing simply stops existing.
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MAR 2011
97.8 percent, and the thesis
Attrition publishes its analysis of the Computer Networking Handbook — 48 pages, $19.95, "roughly 41 cents a page" by attrition's arithmetic — finding 45 of 48 pages (97.8%) plagiarized, some of it from material dating to 1997. His own foreword states the book "is part of my thesis which was written in 2004 - 2005 to accomplish my doctorate degree." Attrition's stated conclusion: this "would call into question his thesis and entire doctorate."
The specimen had, until now, kept the doctorate safely offstage — no university named, résumé by application only. Then it footnoted the thesis into a $19.95 paperback. Self-taxonomy is a hazardous hobby.
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AUG 2011
The amended review
Attrition obtains a full physical copy of Live Hacking and amends its analysis upward — the original review had been based only on the public sample chapter. The file's last dated entry.
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EPILOGUE
Trail cold
The @dralijahangiri Twitter account: deleted, per attrition's annotations. The research file's status column: Unknown. The attrition dossier remains online. The archive keeps the tape running.
both sides, on the record
The plagiarism file (attrition.org's analyses, theirs not ours): The Security Policy Cookbook, 28 of 32 chapters at 100%; Live Hacking, chapters at 95–100%; Computer Networking Handbook, 97.8% — each with a published table naming page numbers and original sources [2] [3] [4].
The credential file: a doctorate claimed for December 2005 with no institution named in his public materials; a résumé available only by vetted request; an award list attrition found to be substantially self-referential [5]. His own foreword ties the 97.8%-plagiarized Handbook to his doctoral thesis [4].
The market's verdict: BN.com removed the Cookbook from sale, per attrition's report [6].
Jahangiri's own account: he purchased a set of policy templates in 2005 from a foreign company, with rights to use them, while busy on other engagements — per attrition's own summary of his response [2]. Attrition itself allows the innocent reading: "Either the company he bought them from plagiarized, and he did not verify the material he received" — a vendor-diligence failure, not an author's theft.
The original work exists: two Cookbook chapters scored 0% in attrition's own table [2]; a filed US patent application (20080065811) is a real, public artifact of work [5]; and a named contributor to the Live Hacking CD, Gary Sims, defended the project publicly — "competition is good for everyone" — while reviewer Wesley McGrew conceded the CD "fits that purpose well" as a class companion [7].
Scope of the record: every percentage on this page is attrition.org's analysis, not a court finding. No lawsuit, no criminal charge, no academic-misconduct ruling appears in the sources here. The doctorate is undisclosed and unverified — which is not the same as disproven.
YOU DECIDE
Scoped to the claims, never the man. The claim that the Cookbook was "based on the 14 years of experience of its author" and two years of study sits across the table from attrition's finding of 28 chapters at 100% plagiarism — and from his own explanation that he bought the material as templates. Both cannot be true. He supplied both.
Weigh the costly signals: attrition published its tables with page numbers and named sources, checkable by anyone with a search engine, and left them up. The reply from the other side of the table was three stories and a vetted-request résumé.
The archive does not judge. The archive merely keeps the tape running.
evidence locker
PRIMARY RECORD
ANALYSIS & OPINION
The standard. Everything above is sourced to attrition.org's published, dated analyses and to the subject's own published words as quoted there. Facts are stated as facts; findings are stated as attrition's findings and wear their author; his defense is presented at full strength, including the innocent reading attrition itself allowed. No motive is asserted, no private character diagnosed, and the doctorate is described as unverified — not fake. The burden of proof is on us, not the subject. If it couldn't survive a defamation challenge, it wouldn't be on this page.