HACKING'S HISTORY !

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.

[1960 Nov] Telephone calls are switched for the first time by computer.

  

  [1971] John Draper ('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 phreakers to make free calls.

 

 

 [1981 May 23] Kevin Mitnick, 17, is arrested for stealing computer manuals from Pacific Bell's switching center in Los Angeles, California. He will be prosecuted as a juvenile and sentenced to probation.

[1982] Kevin Mitnick cracks Pacific Telephone system and TRW; destroys data.

 

 

 

 

 

  [1983 Sep 22] Kevin Poulsen ('Dark Dante') and Ron Austin are arrested for breaking into the ARPANET. At 17 Poulsen is not prosecuted and Austin receives 3 years probation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1984] Bill Landreth ('The Cracker') is convicted of breaking into some of the most secure computer systems in the United States, including GTE Telemail's electronic mail network, where he peeped at NASA Department of Defense computer correspondence. In 1987 Bill violated his probation and was back in jail finishing his sentence. Bill also authored an interesting read titled 'Out of the Inner Circle'.

 

 

 

1984 <<...>> Eric Corley, who uses the hacking handle "Emmanuel Goldstein," starts 2600: The Hacker Quarterly in New York, which quickly becomes a clearinghouse for hacking information.

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 [1988 Nov 2]  <<...>> A 17-year-old high school dropout named Herbert Zinn, known to authorities as "Shadow Hawk," admits he broke into AT&T computers at Bedminster, N.J. Federal authorities say the teen - who worked from a computer in the bedroom of his suburban Chicago home - was close to tapping into AT&T's internal operations and the company's central switching system. Zinn, becomes one of the first people prosecuted under the Computer Fraud Act of 1986, which among other things makes it illegal to use another person's password. He is caught after bragging on an electronic bulletin board that he had attacked an AT&T computer.

 

 

1988 <<...>> Cornell University graduate student Robert Morris, 22, a graduate student at Cornell University and son of a chief scientist at a division of the National Security Agency (NSA) launches a "worm" program onto the Internet that he wrote to exploit security holes on UNIX systems. The worm, programmed to penetrate other computers on the network and replicate itself, quickly spreads to more than 6,000 systems - approximately 1/10 of the Internet at the time ö and virtually shuts down the network by hogging system resources. Morris, who is arrested soon afterward, says he didn't intend to cause the $15 million to $100 million in damage that experts say his creation wrought. He faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines but receives three years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine.

 

1989 <<...>> Five West German cyberspies are arrested on espionage charges as a result of detective work by Clifford Stoll, a University of California, Berkeley, systems administrator who detected and investigated their systematic intrusions into U.S. government and university computer systems. Three of the hackers, who were charged with selling the information and software they obtained to the Soviet KGB, were convicted and sentenced to prison terms, but none ever spent any time behind bars. Stoll later wrote the bestseller "The Cuckoo's Egg" about his pursuit of the hackers.

 

 

 

1989 <<...>> Kevin Mitnick is convicted of stealing software from DEC and long-distance codes from MCI, becoming the first person convicted under a new law against gaining access to an interstate computer network for criminal purposes. He serves a one-year prison term and upon his release on probation is ordered not to use computers or associate with other hackers.

 

 

[1989 Jun 22] 'Fry Guy', a 16-year-old in Elmwood, Indiana cracks into McDonald's mainframe on the Sprint Telenet system. One act involved the young hacker altering phone switches so that calls to a Florida county probation department would ring at a New York phone-sex line answered by "Tina." On September 14 1990, he was sentenced to forty-four months probation and four hundred hours community service.

 

1990 <<...>> Four members of the Legion of Doom, a band of Southern hackers, are arrested for stealing the technical specifications for BellSouth's 911 emergency telephone network, information that could be used to "potentially disrupt or halt 911 service in the United States," according to a subsequent indictment. The company says the hackers also have lifted log-ins, passwords and connect addresses for its computer network and says it has spent $3 million on increased security to combat the hackers. Three of the hackers are found guilty and handed sentences of ranging from 14 months to 21 months and ordered to pay restitution of $233,000 to BellSouth.

 

 

 [1990] Kevin Poulsen's now-infamous incident with KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. Kevin Poulsen is charged with using computers to rig promotional contests at three Los Angeles radio stations, in a scheme that allegedly netted two Porsches, $20,000 in cash and at least two trips to Hawaii. In 1990 the station ran the "Win a Porsche by Friday" contest, with a $50,000 Porsche given to the 102nd caller. Kevin and his associates, stationed at their computers, seized control of the station's 25 telephone lines, blocking out all calls but their own. Then he dialed the 102nd call -- and later collected his Porsche 944. By making sure that only their calls got through, they were able to "win" the top prize.

 

[1990 Mar 7] A 24 year-old Denver man, Richard G. Wittman Jr., has admitted breaking into a NASA computer system. In a plea bargain, Wittman plead guilty to a single count of altering information - a password inside a federal computer.

 

1991 <<...>> The General Accounting Office reveals that Dutch teen-agers gained access to Defense Department computers during the Persian Gulf War, changing or copying unclassified sensitive information related to war operations, including data on military personnel, the amount of military equipment being moved to the gulf and the development of important weapons systems.

 

1992 <<...>> Five members of Masters of Deception, a band of teen-agers based in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, are indicted for breaking into the computer systems of AT&T, Bank of America, TRW, and the National Security Agency, among others. Investigators used the first wiretaps ever in a hacker case to apprehend the hackers. One, Mark ("Phiber Optik") Abene, receives a one-year sentence; the others get off with 6-month sentences.

 

 

 [1994 Mar 23] 16-year-old music student Richard Pryce ('Datastream Cowboy') is arrested and charged with breaking into hundreds of computers including those at the Griffiths Air Force base, NASA and the Korean Atomic Research Institute. The Times of London reported that knowing he was about to be arrested, Richard "curled up on the floor and cried." Pryce later pled guilty to 12 hacking offenses and fined $1,800. Later, Matthew Bevan ('Kuji'), mentor to Pryce was finally tracked down and arrested. The charges against Bevan were later dropped and now he works as a computer security consultant.

 

 

 [1994 Jun 13] Vladimir Levin, a 23-year-old, led a Russian hacker group in the first publicly revealed international bank robbery over a network. Stealing around 10 million dollars from Citibank, which claims to have recovered all but $400,000 of the money. Levin was later caught and sentenced to 3 years in prison.

 

 

1994 <<...>> The Independent newspaper reports that a temporary worker at British Telecom used easily obtained passwords to find the secret phone numbers of the queen, Prime Minister John Major and several top-secret M15 installations, all of which were then posted on the Internet. Steve Fleming, the reporter who wrote the story, later admits that he had worked for the phone company and purloined the numbers.

 

 

1994 <<...>> Hackers launch full-bore attack on security expert Tsutomu Shimomura's computer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which stores sophisticated computer security software. Shimomura joins effort to track convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick, who is suspected in the break-in.

 

 

   1995 <<...>> Kevin Mitnick is arrested in Raleigh, N.C. Physicist and computer security expert Tsutomu Shimomura assists federal authorities in tracking Mitnick down after Mitnick allegedly invaded Shimomura's computer during an assault on San Diego Supercomputer Center systems. Mitnick is charged with breaking into a string of computer networks and stealing 20,000 credit card numbers and copying software programs. Mitnick was in prison awaiting trial until March 1999, when he pleaded guilty to seven felonies. He served another 10 months and was realeased in January 2000 on parole. He cannot use computer equipment until 2003 without permission from his probation officer.

 

 

1996 <<...>> A hacker who goes by the handle Johnny [Xchaotic] mail bombs about 40 politicians, business leaders and other individuals and institutions by subscribing them to Internet mailing lists, generating as many as 20,000 messages in one weekend. [Xchaotic] also publishes a manifesto explaining why he selected each target. He is never caught.

[1996 Apr 19] Hackers break into the NYPD’s phone system and change the taped message that greeted callers. The new message said, "officers are too busy eating doughnuts and drinking coffee to answer the phones." It directed callers to dial 119 in an emergency.

 

 

[1996 Aug 22] Eric Jenott, a Fort Bragg, NC paratrooper is accused of hacking U.S. Army systems and furnishing passwords to a citizen of communist China. Eric's attorney says the Fort Bragg soldier is just a computer hacker who tested the strength of a supposedly impenetrable computer system, found a weakness and then told his superiors about it. Eric was later cleared of the spy charges, but found guilty of damaging government property and computer fraud.

 

 

 

1997 <<...>> The InterNIC domain registry operated by Network Solutions is hacked by a business rival. Eugene Kashpureff, operator of AlterNIC, eventually pleads guilty to designing a corrupted version of InterNIC's software that quickly spread around the world to other DNS servers and prevented tens of thousands of Internet users from being able to reach many Web sites in many ".com" and ".net" domains. The software also "hijacked" visitors to InterNIC's Web site, rerouting them to the AlterNIC home page.

 

 

1998 <<...>> Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre announces that hackers have carried out "the most organized and systematic attack the Pentagon has seen to date," breaking into the unclassified computer networks of numerous government agencies to examine and possibly alter payroll and personnel data. Shortly afterward, two teen-agers from Cloverdale, Calif., are detained in connection with the break-ins. Three weeks later, authorities announce the arrest of an Israeli teen-ager known as "the Analyzer," the alleged mastermind of the intrusion.

 

 

1998 <<...>> Hackers who say they are members of a group known as Masters of Downloading claim to have broken into a Pentagon network and stolen classified software that allows them to control a military satellite system. They threaten to sell the software to terrorists. The Pentagon later denies that that the software is classified or would allow the hackers to control its satellites, but acknowledge that a less-secure network containing sensitive information had been compromised.

 

 

May-June 1999 <<...>> The U.S. Senate, White House and U.S. Army Web sites, along with dozens of other government and consumer sites, fall victim to cyber vandals. In each case, the hackers scrawl messages that are quickly erased. The most notable message reads "Crystal, I love you" on the U.S. Information Agency's Web site, signed "Zyklon".

 

 

November 1999 <<...>> Norwegian group Masters of Reverse Engineering (MoRE) cracks a key to decoding DVD copy protection. The group creates a DVD decoder program for distribution on the Web, a move that spurs a flurry of lawsuits from the entertainment industry.

 

 

February 2000 <<...>> In a three-day period, hackers brought down leading Web sites including Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Buy.com, eBay and CNN.com using "Denial of Service" attacks that overloaded the sites' servers with an inordinate number of data requests.

 

2000 <<...>> Hackers invade World Economic Forum. The compromised data included credit card numbers, personal cell phone numbers and information concerning passports and travel arrangements for a number of government and business leaders. Among the notable victims whose personal information was pilfered were Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

[2001 Feb 12] Anna Kournikova virus released by 20-year-old Dutchman Jan de Wit ('OnTheFly') who was later arrested and sentenced to 150 hours of community service.

[2001 Mar 1] FBI reports that 40 e-commerce sites located in 20 U.S. states were cracked by eastern Europe hackers, have stolen more than one million credit card numbers from U.S. e-commerce and banking websites.

[2001 May 1] Chinese and U.S. hackers attack each other because of the U.S. spy plane that had to make an emergency landing in China after the U.S. plane collides with and kills Chinese fighter pilot Wang Wei.


[2001 Jun 9] Los Angeles Times newspaper reports that hackers attacked a computer system that controls much of the flow of electricity across California’s power grid for seventeen days or more during the state’s worse days of the power crisis. According to the Times, the discover was ade on Friday, May 11 and that it was determined that attackes began as early as Wednesday, April 25. The attack appears to have primarily by an individual associated to China’s Guangdong province and routed through China Telecom. The 17-day intrusion into the networks running California's leading electric power grid has caused considerable concern among state and federal bureaucrats.
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[2001 Jul 12] Notorious hacker group World of Hell managed to deface 679 web sites in just one minute.

[2001 Jul 17] Code Red worm is released. The worm exploits vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Internet Information Server IIS. The worm got its name from "Code Red" Mountain Dew which was used to stay awake by the hackers that disassembled the exploit.

[2001 Jul 16] 27-year old Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov arrested at Def Con 9 for creating a program to copy Adobe electronic books. He was charged with violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Demitry was later released, as part of the agreement, Sklyarov will testify for the government in the case that remains against ElcomSoft, the company that sells the copying software.

[2001 Aug 21] Washington-based Riggs bank has its Visa customer database stolen by hackers.


[2001 Nov 20] Hackers access Playboy.com's credit card data. The hacking group 'ingreslock 1524' claim responsibility.
 

[2002 Feb 25] A 17-year-old female hacker, from Belgium, calling herself 'Gigabyte' takes credit for writing the first-ever virus, called 'Sharpei', written in Microsoft's newest programming language C# (C sharp).

[2002 Jul 11] Hackers broke into USA Today's web site and replaced several of the newspaper's legitimate news stories with phony articles. Israeli hackers were suspeted.


[2002 Jul 30] Copies of OpenSSH are trojaned. OpenSSH is a popular, free version of the SSH (Secure Shell) communications suite and is used as a secure replacement for protocols such as Telnet, Rlogin, Rsh, and Ftp. The main openBSD (ftp.openbsd.org) mirror was compromised, after developers noticed that the checksum of the package had changed.


[2002 Sep 20] Samir Rana ('Torner') a 21 year-old London hacker is arrested following a year-long investigation into the creation of the Linux rootkit program called Tornkit and on suspicion of being a member of the infamous hacker group Fluffy Bunny. It was later reporter that Rana owned the pink stuffed toy depicted in website defacements by Fluffy Bunny.


[2002 Oct 4] Hacker Vasily Gorshkov, 27, of Chelyabinsk, Russia, is sentenced to three years in prison for convictions on 20 counts of conspiracy, fraud and related computer crimes. Gorshkov is also ordered to pay restitution of nearly $700,000 for losses he caused to Speakeasy Network of Seattle, and the online credit card payment company PayPal.


[2002 Oct 16] Microsoft admits to being hacked. The security breach took place on a server that hosts Microsoft's Windows beta community, which allows more than 20,000 Windows users a chance to test software that is still in development.
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 [2002 Nov 12] Gary McKinnon ('Solo'), 36, of London, an unemployed British sysadmin was indicted for what US authorities describe as the "biggest hack of military computers ever detected". From February 2001 until March 2002, McKinnon allegedly exploited poorly-secured Windows systems to attack 92 networks run by NASA, the Pentagon and 12 other military installation scattered over 14 states. Private sector businesses were also affected by the alleged attacks, which caused an estimated $900,000 in damage overall. Prosecutors said that McKinnon "stole passwords, deleted files, monitored traffic and shut down computer networks on military bases from Pearl Harbour to Connecticut".

[2002 Nov 22] Lisa Chen, a 52-year-old Taiwanese woman who pleaded no contest in one of the largest software piracy cases in the U.S. was sentenced to nine years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever for a case involving software piracy. Chen was arrested along with three associates in November 2001 after local sheriffs seized hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated software worth more than $75 million, software that Chen smuggled from Taiwan.