Introducing Information Security - Secure Java: For Web Application Development - page 31

he term hacking mostly referred to an activity that was done out of curiosity and done to
understand computers and the then-nascent area of cyberspace. So, technically the activity, which
involves breaking into systems, is actually meant to be cracking , although hacking became a more
popular term. Let us now explore the history of hacking by timeline:

◾ he 1980s

he 1970s

◾

◾ 2000-present day

he 1990s

◾

2.3.1 The 1970s

In the 1970s, the concept of phone hacking was in vogue. hese hackers were mostly referred to
as phreakers . Probably the most famous of all the phreakers was a man named John Draper, who
was also known as Cap'n Crunch . He discovered that the toy whistles that came with the cereal
Cap'n Crunch * could be used to produce the 2600-hertz sound, which could be used to access the
AT&T long-distance switching system.

2.3.2 The 1980s

he 1980s were a great time for the computing industry. It saw the rise of the concept of PC and
delivered the power of computing to the common man. Hacking groups came to be sometime in
1980, when hackers shared their tips and tricks, imparting their knowledge using Usenet messages
and groups. he irst virus came to be in the year 1981 on the Apple II operating system. It was
spread on Apple II loppy disks containing the operating system. he 1980s also saw the rise of
viruses and worms with the irst ile virus called the Virdem virus and the famous Morris worm.
he Morris worm was probably the irst Internet worm. his worm was initially written to gauge
the size of the Internet. It exploited the insecure services like Sendmail , † Finger , ‡ rsh/rhost , § and
weak passwords; the funny thing is that most of these vulnerabilities still exist on several systems
all over the Internet. he Morris worm was responsible for bringing down almost 6000 govern-
ment and university systems. hat was 10% of the systems on the Internet, in those days. Robert
Morris (the creator of the Morris worm) was convicted under the newly constituted Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. Illegally breaking into computer networks was considered a crime
under the act.

* he conquests of Cap'n Crunch can also be seen in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley , which depicts the rise of
Steve Jobs (the CEO of Apple) and Bill Gates (the former CEO of Microsoft).
† Sendmail is a mail transfer agent, which supports mail delivery and email communication. Sendmail uses
protocols like SMTP or ESMTP. Sendmail services running on a server, if not required to be authenticated, are
a security vulnerability, as they can result in the propagation of spam as well as an entry point for attackers to
gain access to the system.
‡ Finger is a protocol that provides status reports on a particular system or a particular user in a network. It was
created to solve the problem of users requiring information on other users in the network. Finger has been used
extensively by hackers and social engineers to glean information about a network and launch attacks against it.
he Morris worm exploited overlow vulnerability in the inger protocol.
§ Rsh, or Remote Shell, is a protocol that allows remote execution of commands as another user or another com-
puter across a computer network. Rsh sends the password and other user credentials unencrypted across the
network; therefore, it is considered a nonsecure protocol. Also, when a UNIX system has not been hardened,
rsh allows an attacker to execute commands on the system and compromise it.