From phone phreaks to Web attacks, hacking has been a part of computing for 40 years.
Hacking has been around pretty much since the development of the first electronic computers. Here are some of the key events in the last four decades of hacking.
The first computer hackers emerge at MIT. They borrow their name from a term to describe members of a model train group at the school who “hack” the electric trains, tracks, and switches to make them perform faster and differently. A few of the members transfer their curiosity and rigging skills to the new mainframe computing systems being studied and developed on campus.
Phone hackers (phreaks) break into regional and international phone networks to make free calls. One phreak, John Draper (aka Cap’n Crunch), learns that a toy whistle given away inside Cap’n Crunch cereal generates a 2600-hertz signal, the same high-pitched tone that accesses AT&T’s long-distance switching system.
Draper builds a “blue box” that, when used in conjunction with the whistle and sounded into a phone receiver, allows phreaks to make free calls.
Shortly thereafter, Esquire magazine publishes “Secrets of the Little Blue Box” with instructions for making a blue box, and wire fraud in the United States escalates. Among the perpetrators: college kids Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer, who launch a home industry making and selling blue boxes.
Phone phreaks begin to move into the realm of computer hacking, and the first electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) spring up.
The precursor to Usenet newsgroups and e-mail, the boards–with names such as Sherwood Forest and Catch-22–become the venue of choice for phreaks and hackers to gossip, trade tips, and share stolen computer passwords and credit card numbers.
Hacking groups begin to form. Among the first are Legion of Doom in the United States, and Chaos Computer Club in Germany.
The movie War Games introduces the public to hacking, and the legend of hackers as cyberheroes (and anti-heroes) is born. The film’s main character, played by Matthew Broderick, attempts to crack into a video game manufacturer’s computer to play a game, but instead breaks into the military’s nuclear combat simulator computer..
The computer (codenamed WOPR, a pun on the military’s real system called BURGR) misinterprets the hacker’s request to play Global Thermonuclear War as an enemy missile launch. The break-in throws the military into high alert, or Def Con 1 (Defense Condition 1).
The same year, authorities arrest six teenagers known as the 414 gang (after the area code to which they are traced). During a nine-day spree, the gang breaks into some 60 computers, among them computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which helps develop nuclear weapons.
The hacker magazine 2600 begins regular publication, followed a year later by the online ‘zine Phrack. The editor of 2600, “Emmanuel Goldstein” (whose real name is Eric Corley), takes his handle from the main character in George Orwell’s 1984. Both publications provide tips for would-be hackers and phone phreaks, as well as commentary on the hacker issues of the day. Today, copies of 2600 are sold at most large retail bookstores.
In the wake of an increasing number of break-ins to government and corporate computers, Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to break into computer systems. The law, however, does not cover juveniles.
Robert T. Morris, Jr., a graduate student at Cornell University and son of a chief scientist at a division of the National Security Agency, launches a self-replicating worm on the government’s ARPAnet (precursor to the Internet) to test its effect on UNIX systems.
The worm gets out of hand and spreads to some 6000 networked computers, clogging government and university systems. Morris is dismissed from Cornell, sentenced to three years’ probation, and fined $10,000.
In the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines, hackers in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are arrested for breaking into U.S. government and corporate computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB.
Three of them are turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is publicized. Because the information stolen is not classified, the hackers are fined and sentenced to probation.
In a separate incident, a hacker is arrested who calls himself The Mentor. He publishes a now-famous treatise that comes to be known as the Hacker’s Manifesto. The piece, a defense of hacker antics, begins, “My crime is that of curiosity… I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all.”
After a prolonged sting investigation, Secret Service agents swoop down on hackers in 14 U.S. cities, conducting early-morning raids and arrests.
The arrests involve organizers and prominent members of BBSs and are aimed at cracking down on credit-card theft and telephone and wire fraud. The result is a breakdown in the hacking community, with members informing on each other in exchange for immunity.
During radio station call-in contests, hacker-fugitive Kevin Poulsen and two friends rig the stations’ phone systems to let only their calls through, and “win” two Porsches, vacation trips, and $20,000.
Poulsen, already wanted for breaking into phone- company systems, serves five years in prison for computer and wire fraud. (Since his release in 1996, he has worked as a freelance journalist covering computer crime.)
The first Def Con hacking conference takes place in Las Vegas. The conference is meant to be a one-time party to say good-bye to BBSs (now replaced by the Web), but the gathering is so popular it becomes an annual event.
The Internet begins to take off as a new browser, Netscape Navigator, makes information on the Web more accessible. Hackers take to the new venue quickly, moving all their how-to information and hacking programs from the old BBSs to new hacker Web sites.
As information and easy-to-use tools become available to anyone with Net access, the face of hacking begins to change.
Serial cybertrespasser Kevin Mitnick is captured by federal agents and charged with stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. He’s kept in prison for four years without a trial and becomes a cause célèbre in the hacking underground.
After pleading guilty to seven charges at his trial in March 1999, he’s eventually sentenced to little more than time he had already served while he wait for a trial.
Russian crackers siphon $10 million from Citibank and transfer the money to bank accounts around the world. Vladimir Levin, the 30-year-old ringleader, uses his work laptop after hours to transfer the funds to accounts in Finland and Israel.
Levin stands trial in the United States and is sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recover all but $400,000 of the stolen money.
AOHell is released, a freeware application that allows a burgeoning community of unskilled hackers–or script kiddies–to wreak havoc on America Online. For days, hundreds of thousands of AOL users find their mailboxes flooded with multi-megabyte mail bombs and their chat rooms disrupted with spam messages.
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow releases its Trojan horse program, Back Orifice–a powerful hacking tool–at Def Con. Once a hacker installs the Trojan horse on a machine running Windows 95 or Windows 98, the program allows unauthorized remote access of the machine.
During heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, hackers touch off a string of break-ins to unclassified Pentagon computers and steal software programs. Then-U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls it “the most organized and systematic attack” on U.S. military systems to date.
An investigation points to two American teens. A 19-year-old Israeli hacker who calls himself The Analyzer (aka Ehud Tenebaum) is eventually identified as their ringleader and arrested. Today Tenebaum is chief technology officer of a computer consulting firm.
In the wake of Microsoft’s Windows 98 release, 1999 becomes a banner year for security (and hacking). Hundreds of advisories and patches are released in response to newfound (and widely publicized) bugs in Windows and other commercial software products. A host of security software vendors release anti-hacking products for use on home computers.
In one of the biggest denial-of-service attacks to date, hackers launch attacks against eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and others.
Activists in Pakistan and the Middle East deface Web sites belonging to the Indian and Israeli governments to protest oppression in Kashmir and Palestine.
Hackers break into Microsoft’s corporate network and access source code for the latest versions of Windows and Office.
Microsoft becomes the prominent victim of a new type of hack that attacks the domain name server. In these denial-of-service attacks, the DNS paths that take users to Microsoft’s Web sites are corrupted. The hack is detected within a few hours, but prevents millions of users from reaching Microsoft Web pages for two days. Source: Digit Magazine
Most people think of hackers as computer vandals. But, call a real hacker a criminal and believe me, he would do more than lose his computer temper.
Hackers are not computer criminals. Why do most people think of hackers as criminal the media is responsible for this erroneous assumption. Almost all people taking in and bullet there opinions on what they are feed by the media. They do not think twice before believing something that has been printed in the newspapers and magazines. The media has projected hackers to be computer vandals who damage system files after breaking into servers, make and release viruses, deface web sites and a whole lot more.
Real hackers like to call peoples who breaker to systems. Crackers in fast peoples who code and release virus are not necessarily hackers, they are viriicoders.
Traditionally, hackers were computer geeks who knew almost everything about computers (both hardware and software) and were widely inspected for their wide array of knowledge. But over the years, the reputation of hackers has been steadily going down. Today they are feared by most people and are looked upon as icons representing the underground community of our populations.
Hackers know everything about the way software of an application works. They have this uncanny ability of finding out ways of doing the impossible.
They do not accept software application in the from they are meant to be in but more often than not find ways of making software works the way they want to. They debug and code and use trial and error methods to discover unknown and new tricks and secrets. They do try to break into systems but have there decency not to cause any damage a still passwords, etc. but instead of they report the hole or vulnerability to the system administrator they try to break free from restrictions and discover new hidden features. You see, hacking is about knowledge. Hackers are those really intellectual people who have the extra bit of information. They know of things normal people would only dream of.
There top signs that give away fast that the person is not real hackers are:
1. He uses weird handles (names) like Avenger, Dark Cloud, Skull, Kewl Dual, etc. However, these signs are not necessarily fool proof.
2. He boasts about how much he knows a sure sign of a person who lacks real knowledge.
3. He flames newbie’s of people who ask questions, instead of helping them learn.
Hackers are actually nice people from whom you could actually learn a lot. Hackers (nice people) and crackers (not –so-nice people) and not many people can resist the temptation of crossing it.
The reason as to why so-called hackers want to cross the line and become crackers is that they can get quick popularity is negative, it is not respect but people fail to understand is that this popularity is negative, it is not respect but hatred. Believe me, it is no big deal to break into systems and create havoc. Doing such a stupid stuff, might make you popular in the hacking underground world, but this respect is short lived. Today, the number of hackers has increased so much that people very quickly tend to forget what you did.
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Also, normal people do not find your achievements respectful. They do not believe that a person, who defaces sites, performs Denial of Services attacks, releases viruses, etc, is good enough to be respected. This, combined with the media hype, makes people quickly stamp hackers as computer criminals.
A cracker gains popularity only amongst a small part of the population that is the underground world. An ethical hacker, however, gains popularity amongst a larger section of society. And believe me, a hacker who is popular among the normal people is also envied and respected by crackers.
In addition, a cracker is unpopular, unwanted by system administrators and the police. Tell a system administrator about vulnerability in one of his systems, he would surely start respecting you. And besides thinking you, he might even give you the permission to break into the systems. Wow!!! Isn’t that what all hackers dream of?
Besides, cyber crime has become punishable under law, and is considered a serious offence. Amongst the common punishments given to cyber criminals are improvement, huge fines and even life bans from using computers. Also, cyber criminals are not easily given bail.
This is not the space to address legal issues. Instead, let me give you a living example which will surely point you in the right direction and help you choose between a cracker and hacker.
There was a 13-year-old hacker in the US who with his other friend used to relish programming and hacking. They always enjoyed breaking into each other’s systems and proving theirs superiority. They both were immensely intelligent and had the perfect mind needed for business.
These geeks too could have crossed the ‘line’ and become crackers and do all sorts of stupid things, in effect ruin the lives. But fortunately for them, and also fortunately for us, they did nothing like that. Today, we know them as Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Both of them as most of you must be knowing are practically zillionaires.
If they had crossed the line, they would probabley have been spending their entire lives in jail. People would have been calling them computer criminals and system administrators would be wanting to #&^**#. However, they were wise and are today in a position which most of us dream to be in.
I am not suggestion that we should not hack. I in fact support hacking and want more people to become hackers, break into systems, but do only right things. Do something that does no harm to anyone. All real hackers know that an important hacker’s ethic is to never delete any files, or cause any damage that an important hacker ethic is to never delete files, or cause any damage to the system which you have broken into. Make good use of your additional bit of knowledge by doing something legal, something to improve the services and quality offered by companies, something which will do good to the software industry, and something which will do good to the economy. If you do even one of the above, I assure you; you will definitely become famous and would probably be sitting on a pot of gold. Source: Chip Magazine
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