[BreachExchange] Major Events That Changed Cybersecurity Forever

[Destry Winant]

https://www.intelligenthq.com/technology/major-events-changed-cybersecurity-forever/

In the early years of the 1970s, the internet was only an idea, an
objective that IT specialists couldn’t dream of just yet. Back then,
when their highly evolved software suddenly crashed, these engineers
and mathematicians referred to these crashes as inconsistencies or
instabilities. When these happened,  they just reviewed the code,
fixed it and rebooted the program. It could take months for them to
find and fix the “inconsistencies”, and between those lapses of time
when they were trying to fix the problem, life would just go on.
without the IT system.

Little did they know back then about the race that was about to
commence and the thousands of nightmare-ish hours that future
engineers would need to spend fixing these problems in the code that
could mean the difference between a big disaster or a partial setback.
The beginning of cybersecurity was about to happen.

The first virus: I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!

During the 1970s, the precursor of the Internet was a network called
ARPANET.  Arpanet run in a rather close and safe testing lab made up
with a group of a few American universities. It served mainly for
sharing information between high profile people working for those
institutions. Arpanet was archaic and slow, sometimes bringing more
problems than solutions.

One day, due to a scheduled maintenance, the network was shut down
completely,  What was going to happen next was totally unexpected.
When they turned it back on, a message was displayed on their DEC
PDP-10 computers screens saying: “I’m the creeper, catch me if you
can!”  A software called the Creeper, was producing a message that
replicated itself within the network, infecting all other computers.
It also erased all previous info and froze the systems. The creeper
became widely famous, as the very first computer virus ever. Its
maker, was an engineer named Bob Thomas that tried to create “an
experimental self-duplicating program that was intended not to inflict
damage on, but to illustrate a mobile application.” Now, Bob Thomas is
most commonly known as the father of the computer Virus.

To solve this mess, IT engineers had to come up with innovative
software that would be able to target a specific program and remove it
from the computer. This saw the birth of  “Reaper”, a computer tool
designed that became the first antivirus program ever created.

Since then, a kind of race began between programmers and hackers that
still goes on. Programmers try to spot vulnerabilities in a system and
fix them beforehand, whereas hackers want to exploit vulnerabilities
and cause further harm.

The Morris Worm

The vastness and potential destructibility of viruses reached new
heights when the internet finally took off in the late 80s, becoming
fully widespread with more and more institutions involved and
interconnected – healthcare, national administrations, governments,
banks, home users, etc.

Another engineer, Robert Tappan Morris decided to measure how deep was
the web, by releasing across the internet his last creation: a
worm-like software. This was a very special software, as it was the
very first worm virus ever created, called The Morris Worm. It
operated in the following way: when it would find a critical error in
the computer system, it morphed into a virus which replicated rapidly
and began infecting other computers resulting in a denial of service.
Robert Morris defended himself saying that he meant no harm at all,
with “his invention”. Actually, Morris not only invented the very
first worm ever,  but he also discovered a new type of security
breach: the DoS attack.

A DoS attack, or a denial-of-service attack, floods systems, servers
or networks, with traffic to exhaust resources and bandwidth. As a
result, the system is unable to fulfill legitimate requests. Attackers
can also use multiple compromised devices to launch this attack, which
is now more common amongst hackers and is called
distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Vulnerabilities and exposed back-doors in computing can come in many
sizes and shapes, even in systems apparently tough to crack. A great
example of this occurred in 1995, when LA based Kevin Poulsen, one of
the best black hat hackers of all times, hacked Los Angeles phone
system in a bid to win a Ferrari on a radio competition. Poulsen
guaranteed his success as he took control of the phone network and
effectively blocked incoming calls to the radio station’s number. This
was one of the first times that an individual working solo could harm
and disrupt an entire network.

The Dawn of Phishing

Around the mid-1990s,  what we now call phishing,  saw the daylight
for the very first time. In 1994, Windows was already a widespread OS
used by personal computers sitting on a desk, in almost every home in
the US. Microsoft Windows OS was a blossoming industry worth billions
of dollars. The competition was fierce among online providers but
America Online (AOL) was undoubtedly on the lead, with most users
connected to the web and other online services through AOL servers.

Hackers saw the opportunity here and a 17-year-old student of
Pittsburgh, PA, known online as “Da Chronic” developed an application
mainly used by hackers called AOHell to simplify cracking, by using
the extended AOL network. The toolkit contained a new DLL for the AOL
client, a credit card number generator, email bomber, IM bomber,
Punter, and a basic set of instructions.

More worryingly, the program included a function for stealing the
passwords of America Online users. It became a popular toolkit for
hackers in the mid-90s, and its software was complex enough to
disguise itself among the computer while “working” on the background
by stealing data indiscriminately. The first version of the program
was released in 1994 by hackers known as The Rizzer.

Other examples of virus attacks who have done solid harm to
businesses, users, and even governments, are the Melissa virus in 1999
or the Solar Sunrise in 1998. Since then, hackers have been upgrading
their tactics in creative and unexpected ways, featuring even more
complex stratagems to break through security systems. More
importantly, they always seem to be one step ahead of their
counterparts. In fact, a new level of complexity in terms of attacks,
and also danger was reached in the early 2000s, when the whole
internet was attacked.

The worse cybersecurity breach ever to occur though was in 2017 with
WannaCry, although that is a tale to be told in another time.

The Future: AI / Blockchain Attacks?

Nowadays (and even more in the future) more and more businesses,
governments, and consumers in all corners of the world rely on
interconnected digital systems, so any attack on those systems is
increasingly dangerous.

On the other hand, new technologies such as blockchain and AI, have
been developing at an incredible pace. Cybersecurity, an ever-evolving
field in constant need of new and safer solutions, is also developing
Intelligent solutions experimenting with the recent technologies of
blockchain and AI.  These promise to add extra layers of security to
the complex digital systems that structure everything in our lives
right now.

The other side of the coin is that cybercriminals will also create
fully autonomous AI based attacks.  The race that began with the
invention of the internet, will just continue.