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- For all you noobs.
- Computer hacking. Where did it begin and how did it grow?
- ____________________________________________________________
- If you wonder what it was like in days of yore, ten, twenty, thirty years
- ago, how about letting and oldie tell you the way it used to be.
- Where shall we start? Many years ago and the World Science Fiction
- Convention in Boston, Massachusetts? Back then the World Cons were the
- closest thing we had to hacker conventions.
- Picture 1980. Ted Nelson is running around with his Xanadu guys: Roger
- Gregory, H. Keith Henson (now waging war against the Scientologists) and K.
- Eric Drexler, later to build the Foresight Institute. They dream of creating
- what is to become the World Wide Web. Nowadays guys at hacker cons might
- dress like vampires. In 1980 they wear identical black baseball caps with
- silver wings and the slogan: "Xanadu: wings of the mind." Others at World
- Con are a bit more underground: doing dope, selling massages, blue boxing
- the phone lines. The hotel staff has to close the swimming pool in order to
- halt the sex orgies.
- Oh, but this is hardly the dawn of hacking. Let's look at the Boston area
- yet another seventeen years further back, the early 60s. MIT students are
- warring for control of the school's mainframe computers. They use machine
- language programs that each strive to delete all other programs and seize
- control of the central processing unit. Back then there were no personal
- computers.
- In 1965, Ted Nelson, later to become leader of the silver wing-headed
- Xanadu gang at the 1980 Worldcon, first coins the word "hypertext" to
- describe what will someday become the World Wide Web. Nelson later spreads
- the gospel in his book Literacy Online.
- But in 1965 the computer is widely feared as a source of Orwellian powers.
- Yes, as in George Orwell's ominous novel , "1984," that predicted a future
- in which technology would squash all human freedom. Few are listening to
- Nelson. Few see the wave of free-spirited anarchy the hacker culture is
- already unleashing. But LSD guru Timothy Leary's daughter Susan begins to
- study computer programming.
- Around 1966, Robert Morris Sr., the future NSA chief scientist, decides to
- mutate these early hacker wars into the first "safe hacking" environment. He
- and the two friends who code it call their game "Darwin." Later "Darwin"
- becomes "Core War," a free-form computer game played to this day by some of
- the uberest of uberhackers.
- Let's jump to 1968 and the scent of tear gas. Wow, look at those rocks
- hurling through the windows of the computer science building at the
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign! Outside are 60s antiwar
- protesters. Their enemy, they believe, are the campus' ARPA-funded
- computers. Inside are nerdz high on caffeine and nitrous oxide. Under the
- direction of the young Roger Johnson, they gang together four CDC 6400s and
- link them to 1024 dumb vector graphics terminals. This becomes the first
- realization of cyberspace: Plato.
- 1969 turns out to be the most portent-filled year yet for hacking.
- In that year the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency
- funds a second project to hook up four mainframe computers so researchers
- can share their resources. This system doesn't boast the vector graphics of
- the Plato system. Its terminals just show ASCII characters: letters and
- numbers. Boring, huh?
- But this ARPAnet is eminently hackable. Within a year, its users hack
- together a new way to ship text files around. They call their unauthorized,
- unplanned invention "email." ARPAnet has developed a life independent of its
- creators. It's a story that will later repeat itself in many forms. No one
- can control cyberspace. They can't even control it when it is just four
- computers big.
- Also in 1969 John Goltz teams up with a money man to found Compuserve using
- the new packet switched technology being pioneered by ARPAnet. Also in 1969
- we see a remarkable birth at Bell Labs as Ken Thompson invents a new
- operating system: Unix. It is to become the gold standard of hacking and the
- Internet, the operating system with the power to form miracles of computer
- legerdemain.
- In 1971, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies found the first hacker/phreaker
- magazine, YIPL/TAP (Youth International Party -- Technical Assistance
- Program). YIPL/TAP essentially invents phreaking -- the sport of playing
- with phone systems in ways the owners never intended. They are motivated by
- the Bell Telephone monopoly with its high long distance rates, and a hefty
- tax that Hoffman and many others refuse to pay as their protest against the
- Vietnam War. What better way to pay no phone taxes than to pay no phone bill
- at all?
- Blue boxes burst onto the scene. Their oscillators automate the whistling
- sounds that had already enabled people like Captain Crunch (John Draper) to
- become the pirate captains of the Bell Telephone megamonopoly. Suddenly
- phreakers are able to actually make money at their hobby. Hans and Gribble
- peddle blue boxes on the Stanford campus.
- In June 1972, the radical left magazine Ramparts, in the article
- "Regulating the Phone Company In Your Home" publishes the schematics for a
- variant on the blue box known as the "mute box." This article violates
- Californian State Penal Code section 502.7, which outlaws the selling of
- "plans or instructions for any instrument, apparatus, or device intended to
- avoid telephone toll charges." California police, aided by Pacific Bell
- officials, seize copies of the magazine from newsstands and the magazine's
- offices. The financial stress leads quickly to bankruptcy.
- As the Vietnam War winds down, the first flight simulator programs in
- history unfold on the Plato network. Computer graphics, almost unheard of in
- that day, are displayed by touch-sensitive vector graphics terminals.
- Cyberpilots all over the US pick out their crafts: Phantoms, MIGs, F-104s,
- the X-15, Sopwith Camels. Virtual pilots fly out of digital airports and try
- to shoot each other down and bomb each others' airports. While flying a
- Phantom, I see a chat message on the bottom of my screen. "I'm about to
- shoot you down." Oh, no, a MIG on my tail. I dive and turn hoping to get my
- tormentor into my sights. The screen goes black. My terminal displays the
- message "You just pulled 37 Gs. You now look more like a pizza than a human
- being as you slowly flutter to Earth."
- One day the Starship Enterprise barges in on our simulator, shoots everyone
- down and vanishes back into cyberspace. Plato has been hacked! Even in 1973
- multiuser game players have to worry about getting "smurfed"! (When a hacker
- breaks into a multiuser game on the Internet and kills players with
- techniques that are not rules of the game, this is called "smurfing.")
- 1975. Oh blessed year! Under a Air Force contract, in the city of
- Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Altair is born. Altair. The first
- microcomputer. Bill Gates writes the operating system. Then Bill's mom
- persuades him to move to Redmond, CA where she has some money men who want
- to see what this operating system business is all about.
- Remember Hans and Gribble? They join the Home Brew Computer club and choose
- Motorola microprocessors to build their own. They begin selling their
- computers, which they brand name the Apple, under their real names of Steve
- Wozniak and Steve Jobs. A computer religion is born.
- The great Apple/Microsoft battle is joined. Us hackers suddenly have boxes
- that beat the heck out of Tektronix terminals.
- In 1978, Ward Christenson and Randy Suess create the first personal
- computer bulletin board system. Soon, linked by nothing more than the long
- distance telephone network and these bulletin board nodes, hackers create a
- new, private cyberspace. Phreaking becomes more important than ever to
- connect to distant BBSs.
- Also in 1978, The Source and Compuserve computer networks both begin to
- cater to individual users. "Naked Lady" runs rampant on Compuserve. The
- first cybercafe, Planet Earth, opens in Washington, DC. X.25 networks reign
- supreme.
- Then there is the great ARPAnet mutation of 1980. In a giant leap it moves
- from Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
- Protocol (TCP/IP). Now ARPAnet is no longer limited to 256 computers -- it
- can span tens of millions of hosts! Thus the Internet is conceived within
- the womb of the DoD's ARPAnet. The framework that would someday unite
- hackers around the world was now, ever so quietly, growing. Plato fades,
- forever limited to 1024 terminals.
- Famed science fiction author Jerry Pournelle discovers ARPAnet. Soon his
- fans are swarming to find excuses -- or whatever -- to get onto ARPAnet.
- ARPAnet's administrators are surprisingly easygoing about granting accounts,
- especially to people in the academic world.
- ARPAnet is a pain in the rear to use, and doesn't transmit visuals of
- fighter planes mixing it up. But unlike the glitzy Plato, ARPAnet is really
- hackable and now has what it takes to grow. Unlike the network of hacker
- bulletin boards, people don't need to choose between expensive long distance
- phone calls or phreaking to make their connections. It's all local and it's
- all free.
- That same year, 1980, the "414 Gang" is raided. Phreaking is more
- hazardous than ever.
- In the early 80s hackers love to pull pranks. Joe College sits down at his
- dumb terminal to the University DEC 10 and decides to poke around the campus
- network. Here's Star Trek! Here's Adventure! Zork! Hmm, what's this program
- called Sex? He runs it. A message pops up: "Warning: playing with sex is
- hazardous. Are you sure you want to play? Y/N" Who can resist? With that "Y"
- the screen bursts into a display of ASCII characters, then up comes the
- message: "Proceeding to delete all files in this account." Joe is weeping,
- cursing, jumping up and down. He gives the list files command. Nothing!
- Zilch! Nada! He runs to the sysadmin. They log back into his account but his
- files are all still there. A prank.
- In 1983 hackers are almost all harmless pranksters, folks who keep their
- distance from the guys who break the law. MITs "Jargon file" defines hacker
- as merely "a person who enjoys learning about computer systems and how to
- stretch their capabilities; a person who programs enthusiastically and
- enjoys dedicating a great deal of time with computers."
- 1983 the IBM Personal Computer enters the stage powered by Bill Gates'
- MS-DOS operating system. The empire of the CP/M operating system falls.
- Within the next two years essentially all microcomputer operating systems
- except MS-DOS and those offered by Apple will be dead, and a thousand
- Silicon Valley fortunes shipwrecked. The Amiga hangs on by a thread. Prices
- plunge, and soon all self-respecting hackers own their own computers.
- Sneaking around college labs at night fades from the scene.
- In 1984 Emmanuel Goldstein launches 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the
- Legion of Doom hacker gang forms. Congress passes the Comprehensive Crime
- Control Act giving the US Secret Service jurisdiction over computer fraud.
- Fred Cohen, at Carnegie Melon University writes his PhD thesis on the brand
- new, never heard of thing called computer viruses.
- 1984. It was to be the year, thought millions of Orwell fans, that the
- government would finally get its hands on enough high technology to become
- Big Brother. Instead, science fiction author William Gibson, writing
- Neuromancer on a manual typewriter, coins the term and paints the picture of
- "cyberspace." "Case was the best... who ever ran in Earth's computer matrix.
- Then he doublecrossed the wrong people..."
- In 1984 the first US police "sting" bulletin board systems appear.
- The 80s are the war dialer era. Despite ARPAnet and the X.25 networks, the
- vast majority of computers can only be accessed by discovering their
- individual phone lines. Thus one of the most treasured prizes of the 80s
- hacker is a phone number to some mystery computer.
- Computers of this era might be running any of dozens of arcane operating
- systems and using many communications protocols. Manuals for these systems
- are often secret. The hacker scene operates on the mentor principle. Unless
- you can find someone who will induct you into the inner circle of a hacker
- gang that has accumulated documents salvaged from dumpsters or stolen in
- burglaries, you are way behind the pack. Kevin Poulson makes a name for
- himself through many daring burglaries of Pacific Bell.
- Despite these barriers, by 1988 hacking has entered the big time. According
- to a list of hacker groups compiled by the editors of Phrack on August 8,
- 1988, the US hosts hundreds of them.
- The Secret Service covertly videotapes the 1988 SummerCon convention.
- In 1988 Robert Tappan Morris, son of NSA chief scientist Robert Morris Sr.,
- writes an exploit that will forever be known as the Morris Worm. It uses a
- combination of finger and sendmail exploits to break into a computer, copy
- itself and then send copy after copy on to other computers. Morris, with
- little comprehension of the power of this exponential replication, releases
- it onto the Internet. Soon vulnerable computers are filled to their digital
- gills with worms and clogging communications links as they send copies of
- the worms out to hunt other computers. The young Internet, then only a few
- thousand computers strong, crashes. Morris is arrested, but gets off with
- probation.
- 1990 is the next pivotal year for the Internet, as significant as 1980 and
- the launch of TCP/IP. Inspired by Nelson's Xanadu, Tim Berners-Lee of the
- European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) conceives of a new way to
- implement hypertext. He calls it the World Wide Web. In 1991 he quietly
- unleashes it on the world. Cyberspace will never be the same. Nelson's
- Xanadu, like Plato, like CP/M, fades.
- 1990 is also a year of unprecedented numbers of hacker raids and arrests.
- The US Secret Service and New York State Police raid Phiber Optik, Acid
- Phreak, and Scorpion in New York City, and arrest Terminus, Prophet,
- Leftist, and Urvile.
- The Chicago Task Force arrests Knight Lightning and raids Robert Izenberg,
- Mentor, and Erik Bloodaxe. It raids both Richard Andrews' home and business.
- The US Secret Service and Arizona Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau
- conduct Operation Sundevil raids in Cincinnatti, Detroit, Los Angeles,
- Miami, Newark, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Tucson, San Diego, San Jose,
- and San Francisco. A famous unreasonable raid that year was the Chicago Task
- Force invasion of Steve Jackson Games, Inc.
- June 1990 Mitch Kapor and John Perry Barlow react to the excesses of all
- these raids to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its initial purpose
- is to protect hackers. They succeed in getting law enforcement to back off
- the hacker community.
- In 1993, Marc Andreesson and Eric Bina of the National Center for
- Supercomputing Applications release Mosaic, the first WWW browser that can
- show graphics. Finally, after the fade out of the Plato of twenty years
- past, we have decent graphics! This time, however, these graphics are here
- to stay. Soon the Web becomes the number one way that hackers boast and
- spread the codes for their exploits. Bulletin boards, with their tightly
- held secrets, fade from the scene.
- In 1993, the first Def Con invades Las Vegas. The era of hacker cons moves
- into full swing with the Beyond Hope series, HoHocon and more.
- 1996 Aleph One takes over the Bugtaq email list and turns it into the first
- public "full disclosure" computer security list. For the first time in
- history, security flaws that can be used to break into computers are being
- discussed openly and with the complete exploit codes. Bugtraq archives are
- placed on the Web.
- In August 1996 I start mailing out Guides to (mostly) Harmless Hacking.
- They are full of simple instructions designed to help novices understand
- hacking. A number of hackers come forward to help run what becomes the Happy
- Hacker Digest.
- 1996 is also the year when documentation for routers, operating systems,
- TCP/IP protocols and much, much more begins to proliferate on the Web. The
- era of daring burglaries of technical manuals fades.
- In early 1997 the readers of Bugtraq begin to tear the Windows NT operating
- system to shreds. A new mail list, NT Bugtraq, is launched just to handle
- the high volume of NT security flaws discovered by its readers.
- Self-proclaimed hackers Mudge and Weld of The L0pht, in a tour de force of
- research, write and release a password cracker for WinNT that rocks the
- Internet. Many in the computer security community have come far enough along
- by now to realize that Mudge and Weld are doing the owners of NT networks a
- great service.
- Thanks to the willingness of hackers to share their knowledge on the Web,
- and mail lists such as Bugtraq, NT Bugtraq and Happy Hacker, the days of
- people having to beg to be inducted into hacker gangs in order to learn
- hacking secrets are now fading.
- Where next will the hacker world evolve? You hold the answer to that in
- your hands.
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