History Of Hacking prt 3 By CEO of TIA

Somewhere in the book of history, back in the days, when hackers were actually hackers, many things happened, good and bad, for better or worse.‍

It was late 1970s and early 1980s when operating systems like UNIX, MS-DOS and Apple were introduced to shape the computing world. By the time networking technologies like ARPANET started enabling machines to communicate, opening network ports for services like Telnet and FTP, also opening ports for both innovation and exploitation.

The year was 1986 and it marked a very major event in the history of hacking, the first international tracing and arresting of a "hacker", and the winner of the "First Traced & Arrested Hacker" award went to a German hacker named Markus Hess.

Hess was a member of a hacking group who engaged in cyber operations against US military and government computers during the cold war. Markus Hess exploited vulnerabilities in UNIX systems and used tools such as "password crackers" and "remote access via telnet" to steal sensitive information which he sold to the Soviet KGB.

This went on until a man named Clifford Stoll who worked as system administrator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory noticed the intrusion. Stoll was able to trace the source of the intrusion back to Hess which lead to his arrest highlighting the criticality of Operating Systems' exploitation for cyber espionage.

Telnet, introduced year 1970 and served as remote login.

FTP, introduced year 1971 and served as remote "File Transfer Protocol".

Both were vulnerable to many attacks like bruteforce and plain-text password transmission and interception. Both were also the playground of "hackers", be it malicious hackers or otherwise, from whom we note a very notable name "Kevin Mitnick"

Year 1993, all thanks to Linus Torvalds, Linux operating system was introduced setting the path for the Open Source Movement and providing a playground for ethical hackers to explore system vulnerabilities since now they can read and modify certain areas of the operating system to test for exploitability.

Names to remember:

Ian Murphy, known as "Captain Zap".

Famous for hacking AT&T's system to manipulate billing clocks year 1981, Ian exploited system behavior to give some customers free calls.

Robert Tappan Morris.

Created the Morris Worm year 1988, the first worm to significantly impact systems worldwide. It exploited UNIX services and caused disruptions across networks, drawing attention to the need for robust cybersecurity.

Kevin Poulsen, known as "Dark Dante".

Poulsen exploited telephone systems (running on UNIX and Windows servers) to win a Porsche in a radio station contest year 1994. His clever exploitation of networking services was documented as legendary

.... But then, years later, "skiddies" happened...

(History Of Hacking Part 4. Read more)

By Elie Ghabash

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