A short history of hacking

The World Wide Web is a telecommunications system, and hacking telecommunications systems is in no way a new phenomenon. Let’s briefly take a look at some examples.

The Watergate scandal – a man-in-the-middle attack

The Watergate scandal began in 1972 when operatives linked to President Nixon’s re-election campaign were caught wiretapping phones inside the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate building (hence the name the Watergate scandal and why any modern-day political scandal in the West gains the suffix gate). These operatives wanted to listen in to the conversations of their political opponents for political gain. Today, we describe this kind of hack as a man-in-the-middle attack.

Phreaking – VoIP fraud

Beginning in the late 1950s, phreakers (a name derived from phone and freak) began reverse engineering the tones that are used to make premium long-distance calls. Why? Partly for sport and partly so that users could commit toll fraud by making free long-distance (or toll) calls around the world. The whistles and tones needed to commit toll fraud were generated by devices called blue boxes, an example of which is shown here:

Figure 1.1 – A blue box, used for hacking telephone systems

Did you know that before founding Apple, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs built and sold blue boxes? This may go some way to explain – at least from a security standpoint – Apple’s far more rigorous control over its own devices: for example, not being able to modify or update the operating system. It’s also important to realize toll fraud is still a problem: today, we know it as VoIP fraud.

Cracking encryption – SSL attacks

As a final example, we are used to checking that a website we visit displays a padlock/lock icon in the browser address bar as this indicates that the communication between the browser and the server is encrypted:

Figure 1.2 – A padlock icon in the address bar shows a secure connection

Did you know that the world’s first programmable electronic computer was Colossus, which was successfully used to hack secure military communications in World War II?

Key takeaway

There is nothing new under the sun and hacking is no exception. Always assume that bad actors want to gain access to your Moodle – either for sport or for gain.

Now that we have reviewed the history of hacking and understood how far back it goes, let’s start understanding the importance of paying attention to security requirements to combat future hacks as early as possible.