The Spy Shop Glossary

153 terms explained in plain English, covering everything Marie Landry Spy Shop writes about: intelligence and OSINT, privacy, cybersecurity, AI and vibe coding, organics and sustainable development, hemp and bio-based materials, and building a business online.

By Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry · ORCID · Updated October 22, 2026

A B C D E F G H I K L M O P R S T U V W Z

A

Access request #: A request to an organization for a copy of the personal information it holds about you. Under PIPEDA it must answer within 30 days.
Admiralty Code #: A two-part grading system for intelligence, also called the NATO system. Source reliability is rated A (completely reliable) to F (cannot be judged), and information credibility 1 (confirmed by other sources) to 6 (cannot be judged).
Affiliate marketing #: Earning a commission by recommending another company’s products through tracked links.
Agroecology #: Applying ecological principles to farming and food systems, including social and economic fairness.
AI agent #: An AI system that can plan and take actions with tools, such as browsing, running code or editing files, to complete a task.
AI governance #: The rules, policies and oversight that guide how AI is built and used.
Alignment #: Research and practice aimed at making AI systems behave according to human intentions and values.
Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) #: A structured analytic technique that lists every plausible explanation and tests each against all the evidence, looking for what disproves a hypothesis rather than what supports it.
APT #: Advanced persistent threat: a skilled, well-resourced hacking group, often linked to a government, that stays hidden in networks for long periods.
Archiving #: Saving a copy of a web page or file at a known time, for example with the Wayback Machine or archive.today, so a finding can be checked after the original changes or disappears.
Artificial intelligence (AI) #: Computer systems that perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as understanding language, recognizing images or making decisions.
Attack surface #: Everything about an organization that an attacker could find and use: domains, exposed services, leaked credentials, documents and staff information. See attack surface mapping.

B

Backlink #: A link from another website to yours, one of the strongest signals search engines use.
Bast fibre #: The long, strong fibre from the outer stalk of plants such as hemp and flax.
Beneficial ownership #: The real people who ultimately own or control a company, as opposed to the nominees or holding companies listed on paper.
Bio-based material #: A material made wholly or partly from renewable biological sources such as plants.
Biochar #: Charcoal made from plant material and added to soil to improve fertility and store carbon.
Biorefinery #: A facility that turns biomass such as hemp into several products, like fibre, oil, chemicals and energy.
Bootstrapping #: Building a business with your own money and revenue instead of outside investment.
Botnet #: A network of infected devices controlled remotely, often used for spam or denial-of-service attacks.
Bug bounty #: A program that pays researchers for responsibly reporting security flaws.
Business email compromise #: A scam where criminals impersonate a boss, supplier or client by email to redirect payments.

C

Cannabinoid #: A family of compounds found in cannabis, including THC and CBD.
Carbon sequestration #: Capturing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it, for example in soil, plants or materials.
CBD #: Cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating cannabinoid studied for medical uses.
Certificate transparency #: Public logs of every TLS certificate issued for websites. Searching them (for example on crt.sh) reveals a domain’s subdomains.
Certified organic #: Products verified by an accredited certifier as meeting an organic standard. In Canada, the Canada Organic Regime and the Canadian Organic Standards govern the use of the word organic on food.
Chain of custody #: A documented record of how evidence was collected, stored and handled, so its integrity can be shown later.
Chronolocation #: Working out when a photo or video was taken, using shadows, weather, seasonal clues, satellite imagery and known events.
Circular economy #: An economic model that keeps materials in use and designs out waste and pollution.
Cloudflare Worker #: Code that runs on Cloudflare’s global network, used to build fast websites and APIs without managing servers. All Marie Landry Spy Shop subdomains run on Workers.
Collection plan #: The list of questions an investigation must answer and the sources that will be used to answer each one.
Composite #: A material made from two or more components, such as fibres in a resin, that is stronger together than apart.
Confidence level #: A statement of how much an analyst trusts a judgment (low, moderate or high), based on the quality and quantity of the evidence.
Context window #: The amount of text an AI model can consider at once, including your conversation and any documents.
Coordinated inauthentic behaviour #: Networks of fake or misleading accounts working together to manipulate public debate while hiding who is behind them.
Corroboration #: Confirming a claim with at least one other independent source that did not simply copy the first.
Counter-surveillance #: Detecting and defeating surveillance aimed at you, such as hidden cameras, GPS trackers or bugs.
Cover crop #: A crop planted to protect and enrich the soil between main crops.
Credential stuffing #: Trying usernames and passwords leaked from one site on many other sites, exploiting password reuse.
CVE #: Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures: the public catalogue that gives each known security flaw an identifier such as CVE-2026-12345.

D

Data broker #: A company that collects and sells personal information. Many offer opt-out forms, which are part of a digital footprint audit.
Data minimization #: Collecting and keeping only the personal information that is really needed for a purpose.
DDoS attack #: A distributed denial-of-service attack: flooding a website or service with traffic until it stops working.
Deepfake #: Synthetic audio, image or video generated or altered with AI to show something that did not happen.
Digital footprint #: All the information about a person or organization that can be found online, whether shared deliberately or not.
Disinformation #: False information spread deliberately to deceive.
Doxxing #: Publishing someone’s private personal information, such as a home address, to expose or intimidate them. Ethical OSINT does not do this.

E

Embedding #: A list of numbers that represents the meaning of text or images, used for search and comparison.
Encryption #: Scrambling data so that only someone with the right key can read it.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) #: Encryption where only the sender and receiver can read a message, not the company in the middle.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) #: Security software that monitors computers for suspicious behaviour and helps stop attacks in progress.
Epoxidized hempseed oil #: Hempseed oil chemically modified with epoxide groups so it can be cured into a resin.
Estimative language #: Standard words that express probability in analysis, such as “almost certainly”, “likely”, “roughly even chance” and “unlikely”.
EXIF metadata #: Information embedded in photo files, which can include the camera, time and GPS location. Most social platforms remove it on upload.

F

Fine-tuning #: Further training an existing AI model on specific data to specialize it.
Fingerprinting #: Identifying your browser from its unique combination of settings, fonts and hardware, even without cookies.
FININT #: Financial intelligence: analysis of financial records and flows, such as company filings, sanctions lists and leaked financial data.
Firewall #: A barrier that filters network traffic according to rules.
Food sovereignty #: The right of peoples to define their own food and farming systems.

G

Generative AI #: AI that creates new text, images, audio, video or code.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) #: Making content easy for AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to find, understand and cite.
GEOINT #: Geospatial intelligence: analysis of imagery and location data. See GEOINT Basics.
Geolocation #: Establishing exactly where a photo or video was taken by matching its features to maps and satellite or street-level imagery.
Graphene #: A single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb, known for its strength and conductivity.
Greenwashing #: Misleading claims that a product or company is more environmentally friendly than it is.

H

Hallucination #: When an AI model states something false or invented with confidence.
Hash #: A unique fingerprint of a file, such as a SHA-256 value. If the file changes, the hash changes, which proves a preserved copy has not been altered.
Hemp hurd #: The woody inner core of the hemp stalk, used in hempcrete, animal bedding and composites.
Hemp-derived carbon nanosheets #: Thin carbon sheets made by carbonizing hemp fibre, studied for batteries, supercapacitors and composites. Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry calls this class of material Mitlinite.
Hempcrete #: A building material made from hemp hurd, lime and water that is light, insulating and stores carbon.
Hempoxies #: Landry Industries’ research platform for hemp-derived epoxy vitrimers and composites made from hempseed oil, lignin and hemp carbon. See the Hemp Hub.
HUMINT #: Human intelligence: information obtained from people. Lawful HUMINT is open, identified and consent-based, such as interviews with people who choose to speak.

I

IMINT #: Imagery intelligence: analysis of photographs, satellite and aerial imagery.
Incubator #: An organization that helps early-stage companies grow with space, mentoring and resources.
Indicator of compromise (IOC) #: A clue that a system has been breached, such as a malicious file hash, domain or IP address.
Industrial hemp #: Cannabis sativa grown for fibre, seed and other uses, with very low THC. In Canada it must contain no more than 0.3% THC in its leaves and flowers.
Inference #: Running a trained AI model to produce an answer, as opposed to training it.
Infostealer #: Malware that steals saved passwords, cookies and crypto wallets from a computer and sends them to criminals.
Intelligence cycle #: The repeating process of planning, collection, processing, analysis, dissemination and feedback that turns information into intelligence.

K

Key assumptions check #: A structured technique for listing and challenging the assumptions an analysis depends on.

L

Large language model (LLM) #: An AI model trained on large amounts of text to understand and generate language, such as Claude, GPT or Gemini.
Legal espionage #: Marie Landry Spy Shop’s term for intelligence work done only by lawful means: OSINT analysis and open, consent-based HUMINT. A figure of speech, not espionage in the legal sense.
Lignin #: The natural polymer that makes plant cell walls rigid, available as a by-product of hemp and wood processing.
Linkable asset #: A page valuable enough that other sites link to it on their own, such as a free tool, a ranking or a reference guide.

M

Machine learning #: A branch of AI in which systems learn patterns from data instead of following hand-written rules.
Malinformation #: Genuine information shared out of context or to cause harm.
Malware #: Any software designed to harm, spy on or take control of a device.
Metadata #: Information about a message or file rather than its content: who, when, where and how often.
Misinformation #: False information spread without the intent to deceive.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) #: An open standard that lets AI assistants connect to tools and data sources, such as Cloudflare or Google Drive.
Multimodal AI #: AI that works with several kinds of input and output, such as text, images and audio.

O

Open source #: Software, research or designs published with a licence that lets anyone use, study, change and share them.
Open-weights model #: An AI model whose trained parameters are published so anyone can run or modify it.
OPML #: A file format for sharing lists of RSS feeds between news readers.
OPSEC #: Operational security: protecting your own identity, methods and data while you research.
Organic farming #: Farming without synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers or genetically modified organisms, relying on soil health, crop rotation and natural inputs.
Organic Law #: In Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry’s framework, the laws of living systems, such as cycles, limits and biodiversity, that human law should respect. See Organic Law.
Organic Revolution of 2030 #: Landry Industries’ vision of a global transition to organic food and materials by 2030.
OSINT #: Open-source intelligence: intelligence produced by collecting, verifying and analyzing information that is lawfully and publicly available.

P

Passive reconnaissance #: Gathering information about a system or organization without interacting with it directly, for example by reading public records and certificate logs rather than scanning.
Passkey #: A login that uses your device and fingerprint, face or PIN instead of a password, and cannot be phished.
Password manager #: An app that creates, stores and fills a unique strong password for every account.
Patch #: An update that fixes a security flaw or bug.
Penetration test #: An authorized simulated attack on a system to find weaknesses before criminals do.
Permaculture #: A design approach for farms, gardens and communities that imitates natural ecosystems.
Phishing #: A fake message or website designed to trick people into giving up passwords, codes or money.
PIPEDA #: The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada’s federal privacy law for businesses. It gives you the right to see the personal information a company holds about you.
Pre-revenue #: A company that has not yet earned income from customers.
Pretexting #: Pretending to be someone else to obtain information. It is deception, not research, and can be illegal.
Prompt #: The instructions or question you give an AI model.
Prompt engineering #: Writing clear, specific prompts with context and examples to get better results from AI.
Prompt injection #: Hiding instructions in text, web pages or files so that an AI system follows them instead of its user.
Provenance #: Where a piece of information came from, who first published it and how it reached you.
Public interest test #: Weighing whether the value to the public of publishing information clearly outweighs any harm it could cause.

R

Ransomware #: Malware that encrypts or steals an organization’s files and demands payment to restore or not leak them.
Red team #: A group that plays the attacker to test an organization’s defences realistically.
Regenerative agriculture #: Farming that aims to rebuild soil health, biodiversity and water cycles, for example with cover crops, reduced tillage and managed grazing.
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) #: Giving an AI model relevant documents at question time so its answer is grounded in those sources.
Reverse image search #: Searching with an image instead of words to find where else it appears online and its earliest version.
Rights of nature #: The legal idea that ecosystems such as rivers and forests can hold rights of their own.
RSS feed #: A standard file that lists a site’s latest posts so readers and apps can follow updates automatically.

S

Sanctions screening #: Checking people and organizations against government sanctions lists before doing business with them.
Seed sovereignty #: The right of farmers and communities to save, share and breed their own seeds.
SEO #: Search engine optimization: improving a website so it ranks higher in search results.
SIGINT #: Signals intelligence: intelligence from intercepted communications and electronic signals. It is a state activity, not part of OSINT.
SIM swapping #: When a criminal convinces your carrier to move your number to their SIM card, so they receive your text-message codes.
Social engineering #: Manipulating people, rather than computers, into revealing information or granting access.
Sock puppet #: A fake online identity. Many platforms prohibit them, and using one to deceive people crosses ethical lines.
SOCMINT #: Social media intelligence: analysis of publicly available social media content.
Soil health #: The capacity of soil to function as a living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and people.
Source grading #: Rating how reliable a source is and how credible a specific piece of information is, for example with the Admiralty Code.
Stalkerware #: Software secretly installed on someone’s phone to monitor their messages, calls or location.
Structured analytic techniques #: Methods such as ACH and key assumptions checks that make an analyst’s reasoning explicit and reduce bias.
Structured data #: Code (usually JSON-LD) that describes a page’s content to search engines, such as an article, FAQ or product.
Super-affiliate #: An affiliate who earns significant income by promoting many partners across a large network.
Supply chain attack #: Compromising a trusted supplier, software package or update to reach its customers.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #: The 17 goals adopted by all UN member states in 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity by 2030.

T

Terpenes #: Aromatic compounds in plants, including cannabis, that give them their smell and may have biological effects.
THC #: Tetrahydrocannabinol, the main intoxicating compound in cannabis.
Threat intelligence #: Information about attackers, their tools and their targets, used to anticipate and block attacks.
Threat model #: Working out who might want your information, what they could do with it, and how much protection you need.
Token #: A small piece of text, often part of a word, that language models read and write. Usage and limits are measured in tokens.
Tracker #: Code on websites and apps that records what you do and shares it with advertisers and data companies.
Two-step login (2FA) #: A second proof of identity, such as an app code or security key, on top of your password.

U

Universal Declaration of Organic Rights (UDOR) #: An open-source framework by Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry proposing rights for soil, water, seeds, animals and future generations. It is a proposal, not law.

V

Verification #: The process of confirming that information is authentic, accurate and correctly attributed before relying on it.
Vibe coding #: Building software by describing what you want to an AI coding assistant in plain language and refining the result, rather than writing every line yourself.
Vitrimer #: A plastic that is as strong as a thermoset but can be reshaped, repaired and recycled when heated, thanks to exchangeable chemical bonds.
VPN #: A virtual private network: an encrypted tunnel that hides your browsing from your internet provider and your IP address from websites.

W

WTF Method #: Marie-Soleil Seshat Landry’s investigative framework that turns an anomaly (“that’s odd”) into verified intelligence through 5W+1H questions and the Landry Loop.

Z

Zero trust #: A security approach that never trusts a user or device automatically, even inside the network, and checks every request.
Zero-day #: A vulnerability that attackers exploit before the vendor has released a fix.

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