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Hacking History |
| Prehistory (before 1969) |
| Elder Days (1970-1979) |
| The Golden Age (1980-1991) |
| Crackdown (1986-present) |
| Zero Tolerance (1994-present) |
The Golden Age (1980-1991
In 1981 IBM announced a new model -- a stand-alone machine, fully loaded with a CPU, software, memory, utilities, storage. They called it the "personal computer." You could go anywhere and do anything with one of these hot rods. Soon kids abandoned their Chevys to explore the guts of a "Commie 64" or a "Trash-80."
| Richard Stallman |
News
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The 1983 movie War Games shone a flashlight onto the hidden face of hacking, and warned audiences nationwide that hackers could get into any computer system. Hackers gleaned a different message from the film. It implied that hacking could get you girls. Cute girls.
The territory was changing. More settlers were moving into the online world. ARPANET was morphing into the Internet, and the popularity of bulletin-board systems exploded. In Milwaukee a group of hackers calling themselves the 414's (their area code. Duh.) broke into systems at institutions ranging from the Los Alamos Laboratories to Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Then the cops put the arm on them.
The Great Hacker War
To pinpoint the start of the Great Hacker War, you'd probably have to go back to 1984, when a guy calling himself Lex Luthor founded the Legion of Doom. Named after a Saturday morning cartoon, the LOD had the reputation of attracting the best of the best -- until one of the gang's brightest young acolytes, a kid named Phiber Optik, feuded with Legion of Doomer Erik Bloodaxe and got tossed out of the clubhouse. Phiber's friends formed a rival group, the Masters of Deception.
Starting in 1990 LOD and MOD engaged in almost two years of online warfare -- jamming phone lines, monitoring calls, trespassing in each other's private computers. Then the Feds cracked down. For Phiber and friends, that meant jail. End of an era.