[coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's
cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for ‘Intrusion
Countermeasure Electronics’] Security software (in Gibson's novels,
software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or even
literally kill the intruder). Hence, icebreaker: a program designed for cracking
security on a system.
Neither term is in serious use yet as of late 2003, but many hackers
find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the
future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused with
‘ICE’, an acronym for “in-circuit
emulator”.
In ironic reference to the speculative usage, however, some hackers
and computer scientists formed ICE (International Cryptographic Experiment)
in 1994. ICE is a consortium to promote uniform international access to
strong cryptography.
