Salami slicing

Salami slicing refers to a series of many small actions, often performed by clandestine means, that as an accumulated whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once. The term is typically used pejoratively. Although salami slicing is often used to carry out illegal activities, it is only a strategy for gaining an advantage over time by accumulating it in small increments, so it can be used in perfectly legal ways as well.

An example of salami slicing, also known as penny shaving, is the fraudulent practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities, usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent (or other monetary unit) in financial transactions. It would be done by always rounding down, and putting the fractions of a cent into another account. The idea is to make the change small enough that any single transaction will go undetected.^[1]

In information security, a salami attack is a series of minor attacks that together results in a larger attack. Computers are ideally suited to automating this type of attack.

In politics, the term salami tactics has been used since the 1940s to refer to a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition.

In academia, salami slicing refers to the practice of creating several short publications out of material that could have, perhaps more validly, been published as a single article in a journal or review. (See also least publishable unit).

Salami slicing attacks

In January 1993, four executives of a rental-car franchise in Florida were charged with defrauding at least 47,000 customers using a salami technique.^[2]

In Los Angeles, in October 1998, district attorneys charged four men with fraud for allegedly installing computer chips in gasoline pumps that cheated consumers by overstating the amounts pumped.^[2]

In 2008, a man was arrested for fraudulently creating 58,000 accounts which he used to collect money through verification deposits from online brokerage firms a few cents at a time.^[3]

In fiction

Film

Salami slicing has played a key role in the plots of several films, including Superman III, Hackers, and Office Space. In the latter title, the characters reference Superman III as inspiration.^[4]

Television

In a 1972 episode of the TV series M*A*S*H, Radar attempts to ship an entire Jeep home from Korea one piece at a time. Hawkeye commented that his mailman "would have a retroactive hernia" if he found out.^[5] The 1987 TV movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Murdered Madam features a murder trial involving the transfer of fractional cents by bank employees.

Music

Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" has a similar plot to the M*A*S*H episode, but with a Cadillac having parts from model years 1949 through 1973.^[6]

See also

• Publish or perish § See also
• Salami tactics
• Smurfing

References

External links

• How computers enable salami slicing to occur
• A Network World article discussing salami fraud, with several examples