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Avast_Security_News: The history of cybersecurity
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From the 1940s to the present, discover how cybercrime and cybersecurity have developed to become what we know today
 
Many species evolve in parallel, each seeking a competitive edge over the other. As cybersecurity and technology have evolved, so have criminals and ‘bad actors’ who seek to exploit weaknesses in the system for personal gain – or just to prove a point. 

This arms race has been going on since the 1950s, and this article explains the evolution of cyberattacks and security solutions. 
  • 1940s: The time before crime
  • 1950s: The phone phreaks
  • 1960s: All quiet on the Western Front
  • 1970s: Computer security is born
  • 1980s: From ARPANET to internet
  • 1990s: The world goes online
  • 2000s: Threats diversify and multiply
  • 2010s: The next generation
1940s: The time before crime

For nearly two decades after the creation of the world’s first digital computer in 1943, carrying out cyberattacks was tricky. Access to the giant electronic machines was limited to small numbers of people and they weren’t networked – only a few people knew how to work them so the threat was almost non-existent.

Interestingly, the theory underlying computer viruses was first made public in 1949 when computer pioneer John von Neumann speculated that computer programs could reproduce.

1950s: The phone phreaks

The technological and subcultural roots of hacking are as much related to early telephones as they are to computers.

In the late 1950s, ‘phone phreaking’ emerged. The term captures several methods that ‘phreaks’ – people with a particular interest in the workings of phones – used to hijack the protocols that allowed telecoms engineers to work on the network remotely to make free calls and avoid long-distance tolls. Sadly for the phone companies, there was no way of stopping the phreaks, although the practice eventually died out in the 1980s. 

The phreaks had become a community, even issuing newsletters, and included technological trailblazers like Apple’s founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. The mold was set for digital technology.

1960s: All quiet on the Western Front

The first-ever reference to malicious hacking was in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s student newspaper.

Even by the mid-1960s, most computers were huge mainframes, locked away in secure temperature-controlled rooms. These machines were very costly, so access – even to programmers – remained limited. 

However, there were early forays into hacking by some of those with access, often students. At this stage, the attacks had no commercial or geopolitical benefits. Most hackers were curious mischief-makers or those who sought to improve existing systems by making them work more quickly or efficiently. 

In 1967, IBM invited school kids to try out their new computer. After exploring the accessible parts of the system, the students worked to probe deeper, learning the system’s language, and gaining access to other parts of the system. 

This was a valuable lesson to the company and they acknowledged their gratitude to “a number of high school students for their compulsion to bomb the system”, which resulted in the development of defensive measures – and possibly the defensive mindset that would prove essential to developers from then on.

Ethical hacking is still practiced today.

As computers started to reduce in size and cost, many large companies invested in technologies to store and manage data and systems. Storing them under lock and key became redundant as more people needed access to them and passwords began to be used.

1970s: Computer security is born

Cybersecurity proper began in 1972 with a research project on ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a precursor to the internet.

Researcher Bob Thomas created a computer program called Creeper that could move across ARPANET’s network, leaving a breadcrumb trail wherever it went. It read: ‘I’m the creeper, catch me if you can’. Ray Tomlinson – the inventor of email – wrote the program Reaper, which chased and deleted Creeper. Reaper was not only the very first example of antivirus software, but it was also the first self-replicating program, making it the first-ever computer worm.Challenging the vulnerabilities in these emerging technologies became more important as more organizations were starting to use the telephone to create remote networks. Each piece of connected hardware presented a new ‘entry point’ and needed to be protected.

As reliance on computers increased and networking grew, it became clear to governments that security was essential, and unauthorized access to data and systems could be catastrophic. 1972-1974 witnessed a marked increase in discussions around computer security, mainly by academics in papers.

Creating early computer security was undertaken by ESD and ARPA with the U.S. Air Force and other organizations that worked cooperatively to develop a design for a security kernel for the Honeywell Multics (HIS level 68) computer system. UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute worked on similar projects.

ARPA’s Protection Analysis project explored operating system security; identifying, where possible, automatable techniques for detecting vulnerabilities in software.

By the mid-1970s, the concept of cybersecurity was maturing. In 1976 Operating System Structures to Support Security and Reliable Software stated:
“Security has become an important and challenging goal in the design of computer systems.”

In 1979, 16-year-old Kevin Mitnick famously hacked into The Ark – the computer at the Digital Equipment Corporation used for developing operating systems – and made copies of the software. He was arrested and jailed for what would be the first of several cyberattacks he conducted over the next few decades. Today he runs Mitnick Security Consulting.
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