[U.S. military jargon]
1. Originally, a team (of sneakers) whose
purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These
people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave
cardboard signs saying bomb
in critical defense
installations, hand-lettered notes saying Your codebooks have been
stolen
(they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a
successful penetration, some high-ranking security type shows up the next
morning for a ‘security review’ and finds the sign, note, etc.,
and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead
to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the
patch entry for an example).
2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or special firefighting group called in to look at a problem.
A subset of tiger teams are professional crackers, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly ‘secure’ comm channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense.