Hijacking

From Freepedia

Hijacking or highjacking is the forcible robbery from, or seizure of, a vehicle in transit.

Historically the term used to refer to robbery of trucks or other land motor vehicles (see carjacking) and aircraft skyjacking. The term arose from someone wanting a lift on a truck calling "Hi, Jack" (the exclamation plus the name), until this was used often as a trick by robbers.

Contemporarily the term is primarily associated with high-profile aircraft hijacking for political purposes including terrorism, although other cases have included the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 which could also be considered piracy.

In IT, the term "hijacking" is also used when spyware or a virus writes itself in a computer program in such a way that whenever that program starts to work, besides its normal duties it does other things too, which the creator of the virus or spyware meant it to.

Derived usages

• HijackThis (a computer virus remover program)
• HiJaak (a computer graphics capture & processing program)
• Hy-Jak was a stacking stillage storage system: re-etymologized as "high" + "to jack up".