History of Hacking

Hacking, one of the most fascinating word that we know.
But how did it all begin?
Let's read through this and find out.

It was in 1960s at Massachusetts Institute of Technology that some of the MIT train enthusiasts hacked their train sets how they work. These devout programmers used their expertise to modify programs for optimization and to use them for specific applications.

1970s saw boom of another type of hackers called "phreakers" emerged, they mainly exploited the newly built electronic telephone networks to make long distance free calls(the calls were costly during that generation). The most popular phreakers were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both later founded Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs(L) & Steve Wozniak(R) working together in 1976

Steve Wozniak phreaking with the help of BlueBox (L) & A typical BlueBox(R)

1980s : The hacking started getting popular among the masses due to introduction of personal computers and this provided a lot more to be explored. The 80s saw formation of famous hacker group Legion of Doom which remained active till early 2000s. In 1988 "Robert Tapan Morris" created the Morris Worm considered the first computer worm on the Internet and subsequently becoming the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In 1989 "Herbert Zinn" becomes the first juvenile convicted under the Computer Fraud Act for hacking into computer systems at AT&T, government offices thus stealing sophisticated software worth $1 million.

Robert Tappan Morris(Left)
"Morris Worm" source-code is now displayed at The Computer History Museum(Right)

Arrest warrant for Kevin Mitnick dated 10th November, 1992

1990s : This decade was know as Golden Era Of Hacking due to the invention of World Wide Web. In 1992 a gang of phreakers Masters Of Deception were nabbed down with proof. Later in 1995 Kevin Mitnick, probably the world’s most prolific and best known hacker, is arrested and charged with obtaining unauthorized access to computers belonging to numerous computer software and computer operating systems manufacturers, cellular telephone manufacturers, Internet Service Providers, and educational institutions; and stealing, copying, and misappropriating proprietary computer software from Motorola, Fujitsu, Nokia, Sun, Novell, and NEC. Mitnick was also in possession of 20,000 credit card numbers. And in the same year Christopher Pile was the first person jailed for writing and distributing a computer virus. In 1997 a freeware named AOHell, it allowed script kiddies to wreak havoc on AOL was released. In 1998 the twin brothers Hao Jinglong and Hao Jingwen were sentenced to death by a court in China for stealing ~$87,000 from a bank.

2000s : This decade saw sophisticated hacking. In 2000 Onel De Guzman wrote a worm named I LOVE YOU in VBScript which affected around 45 million computers and caused damage worth $25 billion. In 2001 the tech giant Microsoft saw new type of hacking attack called Denial of Service(DoS), this is one of the most popular hacking attack now. 2003 saw the formation of the greatest hacktivist group The Anonymous. This decade saw most of hacking attacks. In 2008 around 20 Chinese hackers claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including The Pentagon.

Onel De Guzman, creator of ILOVEYOU virus

2010s : This decade saw boom of social networking sites and the hacking attacks increased. This decade due to high impact of internet saw more cybercrimes and more experiments. In 2011 LulzSec, a black-hat hacker group was formed which claims responsibility for Sony Picture hacking and an elite hacker sl1nk releases information of his penetration in the servers of the Department of Defense (DoD), Pentagon, NASA, NSA, US Military, other UK government websites. In 2012 a Saudi hacker 0xOmar, published over 400,000 credit cards online and threatened to release 1 million credit cards online. In 2013 two FBI web servers hacked by a Japanese hacker named Daisuke Dan and there were several attacks on Instagram using new vulnerabilities like Heartbleed, Shellcode and XSRF.

Keep on reading to find out the new things going to happen in future.
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