[Update: This review was originally based entirely on a sample chapter available to the public. This review has been ammended to include additional plagiarism review after a copy of the book was obtained.]
Dr. Ali Jahangiri released a book titled "Live Hacking: The Ultimate Guide to Hacking Techniques & Countermeasures for Ethical Hackers & IT Security Experts" (October 21, 2009). From his website describing the book, he says ".. a world-renowned information technology (IT) expert, brings us the next must-have in IT training: Live Hacking, the definitive and comprehensive guide to computer hacking. Groundbreaking, insightful, and practical .." His summary goes on to say "He brings his many years of academic, professional, and practical experience to the fore in order to equip you and your organization with the know-how needed in this day and age to defend your data against the ever-increasing cyber-thieves on the Internet." There is no confusion over Jahangiri's language, that he authored this book based on 14 years of experience.
After noticing the apparent plagiarism in another of his books, Attrition.org looked at the (http://www.livehacking.com/book/sample-chapter now removed) sample chapter available for the Live Hacking book. Using simple Google queries for key phrases from the one chapter, we found what appears to be wide-scale plagiarism. The table below breaks down the material available, page count and approximate percent of material lifted from other sources. Note: instances of missing pages are due to the entire book not being available.
The copyright page indicates that the book went through a third-party service for editing and proofreading. It is interesting that the company did not find any of these issues. Apparently, spot checking for plagiarism is not part of their service.
Scribendi, Inc.
405 Riverview Drive, Suite 304
Chatham, ON N7M 5J5
Canada
Additionally, the sections that appear to be written by Jahangiri contain a wide variety of grammatical errors, as well as issues with capitalization. For example:
Page 183 on MAC Filtering appears to have original content, but desperately in need of an editor. "Rouge Access Point Attack" would clearly pass a spell check, but should not pass a technical editor. Dr. Jahangiri also gets points for quoting parts of the BackTrack manual in his book on LiveHacking, after maintaining that LiveHacking is a better distribution.