Hacker History

Hacking has been present  for more than a hundred years. In the late 1870s, several young people were banned from  the country's brand new phone system authorities whom did not take kindly to early "Phone Hackers".

IN The Early 1960s
a) Hackers first choice are University mainframes.

b) "hacker" was a positive term for a person who knew everything about computers. A Hacker could push programs beyond their designed abilities.

c).
IN The Early 1970s
A  Hacker by the name of "John Draper" made a free long-distance call by blowing a specific tone into the telephone that told the phone system to open a line. Draper found the whistle as a present in a box of children's cereal. Draper, who later earned the name "Captain Crunch," was arrested continuously for phone tampering throughout the 1970s.

d) Two members of California's Homebrew Computer Club began working on   "blue boxes": devices designed to break into the phone system. These same two  members, who adopt the a.k.a.'s "Berkeley Blue" (Steve Jobs) and "Oak Toebark" (Steve Wozniak), later found Apple Computer.

In The Early 1980s
a) In one of the first arrests, the FBI caught up to group of Hackers called Milwaukee-based 414s (the local area code). Members were accused of nearly 60 computer break-ins, including the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

b) Comprehensive Crime Control Act gives Secret Service authority over computer and credit card fraud..

c) Two hacker groups form, the Chaos Computer Club in the Germany and the Legion of Doom in the United States.

In The Late 1980s
a) The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act gives more power to Federal authorities.

b) Computer Emergency Response Team is joined by U.S. defense agencies.

c) Ground Zero is located at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, its purpose is to investigate the growing margin of attacks on computer networks.

d) "Kevin Mitnick" A  25 year old, veteran hacker  secretly watched the e-mail of MCI and Digital Equipment security officials. He was convicted of destroying computers and theft of software and was held in prison for one year.

c)  The First National Bank of Chicago was a victim of a $70-million computer embezzlement.

d) The  Indiana hacker known as "Fry Guy" got the name for hacking the well known fast food chain: " McDonald's " he was raided by law enforcement.

e) A similar raid occurs in Atlanta for Legion of Doom Hackers known by the aliases "Prophet," "Leftist" and "Urvile."

Early 1990s
a) After AT&T's long-distance services crashed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, law enforcement started a National hunt for hackers. The F.B.I bagged St. Louis' "Knight Lightning" and in New York the F.B.I. captured Masters of Deception trio "Phiber Optik," " Acid Phreak" and "Scorpion."      Fellow hacker "Eric Bloodaxe" was also snagged in Austin, Texas.

b) Operation Sundevil, a special team of Secret Service agents and members of Arizona's organized crime unit, lead raids in 12 major cities, including Miami. A 17-month search finished in the capture of Hacker known as "Kevin Lee Poulsen" went by the name of  "Dark Dante", and was later indicted for theft of  military documents.

c) Hackers broke into Griffith Air Force Base, then hacked computers at NASA and the Korean Atomic Research Institute.

d) Scotland Yard snags "Data Stream," a 16-year-old British teenager who assumes in the fetal position when he is captured.

e) A Texas A&M professor received several death threats after a hacker logged on to the professors computer and sent 20,000 racial e-mails using the professors Internet address.The Hacker used a computer off-campus to do this.

f)

"Kevin Mitnick", in a highly recognized and publicized case, after he is searched for and tracked down via computer by "Tsutomu Shimomura" at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Kevin Mitnickis arrested once more in Raleigh, N.C.,

In The Late 1990s
a) Hackers hacked into and defaced several Federal Web sites, including the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Air Force, CIA, NASA and others.

b) The General Accounting Office discovers the Defense Department computers sustained 250,000 attacks in 1995 alone.

c) A Canadian hacker group called the "Brotherhood"  became upset when several hackers were falsely accused of electronically stalking a Canadian family and breaking into the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Web site where they allegedly left the following message: "The media are liars." The family's own 15-year-old son eventually is identified as the stalking culprit.

d) Hackers pierce security in Microsoft's NT operating system to present its weaknesses.

e) Popular Internet search engine Yahoo! is hit by hackers claiming that a "logic bomb" will go off in the PCs of Yahoo!'s users on Christmas Day 1997 unless Kevin Mitnick is released from prison. "There is no virus," Yahoo! spokeswoman Diane Hunt said.

f) An anti-hacker ad ran during Super Bowl XXXII. The Network Associates ad, costing a whopping $1.3-million for 30 seconds, shows two Russian missile silo crewmen worrying that a computer command to launch missiles may have come from a hacker. They decide to blow the world up anyway.

g) The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics is overwhelmed for days with hundreds of thousands of fake information requests, a hacker attack called "spamming."

h) Hackers break into United Nation's Children Fund Web site, threatening  a "holocaust" if Kevin Mitnick is not freed from prison.

i) Hackers claim to have broken into a Pentagon network and stolen specific software for a military satellite system. They threaten to reproduce and distribute the software to terrorists.

j) The U.S. Justice Department reveals the National Infrastructure Protection Center, which is given a command to protect the nation's telecommunications, technology and transportation systems.

k)   In testimony before Congress, the hacker group "L0pht" states it could shut down nationwide access to the Internet in less than a half of a hour. The group demands stronger security and more safety features.

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