Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"

Subject: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"
From: Rachael Lininger <techwhirl -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 08:35:42 -0600 (GMT-06:00)

I need to write a report on war dialing and I'm not sure what to call it.

War dialing (however you spell it) is the ritual of calling all the phone numbers in an exchange to see which answer with a modem. It's good for either cracking into a network or for seeing if your network is properly defended -- random modems are usually much easier to get into than a company's firewall.

Google has about 1100 hits for "war dial"/"war-dial" and 800 hits for "wardial." Unfortunately, however, some pages use different spellings for the same form of the word. There doesn't appear to be a clear progression, either -- it's not like some people are using "to war dial" vs. "the wardial project." Though I've seen that, too. I kind of prefer this use (it follows "to log in" vs. "login screen"), but I suspect this may be weirdly nitpicky.

The @stake briefing uses "wardial" exclusively, but the references in its bibliography again use both. I don't have my Sun style guide yet -- still waiting for the corporate credit card to come through so I can order it -- and I doubt that would be in it, anyway.

Is there a standard usage, or should I just pick one?

Is there a style guide with information security terms?

Rachael




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