Were your grandparents hacking in 1963?

More than 50 years ago, on November 20, 1963, MIT's campus newspaper The Tech published what is believed to be the first ever mention of computer hacking.



Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Profess Carlton Tucker... The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found.

It was a different time - Kennedy was just a couple of days away from being assassinated, and in a few months The Beatles would appear on the Ed Sullivan show.

So next time your parents or grandparents shake their heads about the malicious hacks that take place today, perhaps point them towards this and remind them "It's your generation which started all this!"

According to MIT, the word "hack" itself (in terms of meddling with technology, at least) dates back even earlier, to 1955. Learn more by reading the article on MIT's Slice.

Source: Graham Cluley