A Brief History of Hacking Computer Hacking has existed since computers were invented. I have tried to get this in a rough chronological order, but many things were happening pretty much at once, so it will have to remain rough for now. Maybe some day I will have to time to draw up a timeline chart. This is also (as always) told from my own personal view. I was around for most of this, was not exactly just standing around watching if you know what I mean. The Beginnings - Hand to hand - The net did not exist yet. Hackers were mainframe programmers, Commodore 64, and Apple users. Cracked software and hacker/cracker tools are traded between friends. Joe trades his "cracked" (copy protection removed) of a hot new game to Pete for Pete's home brew disk editor. There were ethical standards imposed upon these trades and hackers who demonstrated anti-social behavior where soon ostracized and no longer traded with. This kept things under control to a great extent. Most hacked for the knowledge foremost with the challenge and the competition running close behind. Who can break the new game first? Who can write the best tool? Groups formed, combined their efforts, and tried to outdo each other. The IBM PC is released and computers and software become more plentiful, cheaper, and a lot more people get into hacking. The software companies begin to use more and more sophisticated security measures to prevent their software from being copied. The hackers became better and better and breaking them. It becomes the great game! The hackers are generally respected among other programmers; their skills admired. Being a hacker was a good thing. The BBS age - The modem came into wide spread use. Soon BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) sprang up all over the place. These were computers with one or more modems attached to them. You could connect with other users of the BBS here. You could chat, download files, send mail, and post messages on these systems. Now all kinds of software and images where able to be traded. But trading was now different, for every file you uploaded you could download 10! This speeded up the distribution of the hacking tools, and removed most of the peer pressure that had kept things under control before. The modern hacker is born. The BBS's also gave hackers a new challenge, that of hacking into another system remotely. Hacking into the BBS' computers becomes the new thing to do. The malicious hacker is born. It also gives rise to the bad boys. They are the ones that when thrown off the BBS for anti-social behavior, they strike back by hacking in and defacing the site and destroying files. Security measures start to be implemented to combat this. The second round begins. Now it is the hackers vs. the security systems. The game continues.... Many corporations and universities now have computers. Most of these have modems installed, mainly for the manufacturer to perform remote maintenance. Now hackers are breaking into these computers as well. Hacking becomes a much more serious threat. At this time there is very little in the way of security systems in place to prevent the hackers from getting in, the BBS's are way ahead of the corporations in this area. The break-ins, when they are noticed, get very little publicity. Hidden away in the university labs, the net is being born. Only a few computers hooked together at first, but it begins to grow rapidly. The modern hacking tool is born. Hackers start creating new tools. One of the important ones was the dialer. A dialer is a program that dials all the numbers in an area and finds the modems there. The better ones would even test for known logins and passwords. The movie "War Games" comes out. The world now knows the word "hacker". Hackers are now either considered dangerous nuts, or modern heroes. Suddenly lots of teens want to become hackers. "Hacker" BBS's proliferates. Dialers and other tools proliferate as well. Some of these new hackers make mistakes, accidents happen. More anti-social types join in, and the malicious hackers delete files, crash systems, and generally wreak havoc. The sysops begin to realize that all is not well, and security awareness begins to rise, but most are not nearly as skilled as the hackers are. Blue boxes. Blue Boxes ("free" long distance) and dialer software merge and hackers begin to use the phone system to spread beyond their local area. The Phone Company starts going after the hackers for illegal use of the phones. Laws are starting to be created concerning computer crime, but they are feeble and vague, but before this time all the hacker activity was not violating any laws except perhaps for some copyright infringement. The Net age - The net now includes 100's of computers. While there are no ISP's, many universities, and corporations where now linked together. These computers have modems, so hackers start visiting other systems using their local hacked system. The shell account is born. Hackers use PC's and modems to break into local systems, give themselves a full access account, and use it the break into other systems in the net. As the net grows and the number of hackers grows with it, more accidents happen, and malicious hackers delete files, crash systems, and generally wreak havoc. The Web Age With the domain name system in place the World Wide Web is born. There is an explosion of computer users going on-line. The BBS's quickly move to the web, and now the tools and tricks get very widespread distribution. Windows and GUI interfaces take over, and we now have point and click hacking. This leads to a new kind of hacker, called "script kiddies". The script kiddies have very low skills, but they don't need skills with the new tools. This new web also makes everyone anonymous. This anonymity makes the kiddies bold, and they feel they can do anything with no repercussions. This sets off a wave of anti-social behavior that rocks the net. Viruses, Trojan horses, DOS attacks. Malicious hacking becomes the norm and the old style curious hacker becomes a vanishing breed. Security becomes a major issue, but for every security hole plugged, two new ones open up. Shell accounts become even more important now, and hiding your tracks becomes both easier, and more important. Laws are passed and the FBI and SS get into the act. So far law enforcement has had little effect. They can only catch the real losers, those who are too ignorant or stupid to cover their tracks. The good ones, the informed ones, make their attacks with impunity, and even when detected the attacks mostly going unreported for fear of bad publicity. The Elite hackers have even more power now, their knowledge and skills are much better than the average Sysop, and the Elite can pretty much do as they please. Most of the ethical ones are lured by big money to work for the "other side" and become network security experts. The unethical Elite hackers become a true criminal element in hacker scene. Now we have KGB trained cyberspys, credit card number thieves, and the information thieves stealing corporate secrets among others.