Professional Documents
Culture Documents
History of Hacking
• 1971 John Draper discovers that a toy whistle included in a box of children's
cereal reproduces the exact audio tone needed to open a telephone line and begin
making free long-distance calls.
• 1984: Eric Corley publishes 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which becomes an
early source for telephone and computer hacking.
• 1986: The United States Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which makes hacking illegal
• 1988: Robert Morris, a 22-yeard old university graduate releases a self-replicating
virus on the Internet and infects 6000 systems
• 1993: Hackers break into AT&T's computer networks and bring long-distance
telephone service to a standstill on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
• 1994: Two teenage hackers break into several hundred computer systems,
including NASA and the Korean Atomic Research Institute.
• 1996: The General Accounting Office in the United States releases a report stating
that hackers attempted to break into Defense Department files more than 250,000
times in 1995 alone; about 65 percent of the attempts were successful
• 2001: In early May, groups of Chinese hackers infiltrate several U.S. government
sites, including those of the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
Department of Health and Human Services