http://www.howitworksdaily.com How It Works 023
DID YOU KNOW? Experts predict cyber crime will cost the world in excess of $6 trillion by 2021
T
he world is in the grip of a new age of
conflict. Where once ships, planes, tanks
and soldiers did battle to further the
goals of their ow n nations, now sophisticated
c yber attacks are the new weapons of choice.
Countries are using hackers to target power
grids, financial markets and government
computer systems of rival nations, all w ith
potential results that are ever y bit as devastating
as any bullet or bomb.
The idea of using tech to pilfer information
goes back a long way, as far back as 1834, in
fact, with t wo French brothers – the Blanc
brothers – who used to earn a liv ing trading in
government bonds.
They found a way to get ahead of the
competition by bribing a telegraph operator
to include deliberate mistakes in messages
being transmitted from Paris. This let them get a
heads up on financial deals before anyone else
did. But as technology got more sophisticated, so
did the crimes the crooks were capable of
pulling off. However, it wasn’t until almost 150
years later that the first person would be
charged w ith a c yber crime.
Back in 1981 a chap called Ian Murphy –
imaginatively nicknamed Captain Zap – hacked
into US telecoms company AT&T and changed its
internal clock to charge off-peak fees to people
making peak-time calls. Although he thought he
was doing these people a favour by letting them
use the phone on the cheap, the company –
hav ing lost millions of dollars – and the US
government were none too impressed, so he
was given 1,000 hours of communit y ser v ice and
a fine as punishment.
Thesedays,whenyouthink about what
mostteenagersgetuptowith their
computersit probablyconjures up
imagesofv ideogames or
Facebook– not hacking into
thecomputers of the
peoplewho put a man on
theMoon and built the
SpaceShuttle.
Butthat’s exactly
what 15-year-old
Jonathan James
decided to do.
Installing
backdoors- gaps in
computer code
that allow
hackers to
easily infiltrate
a system –
into the US
Department of
Defense, he was able
Hackers could hack into smart homes by
gaining access to our smart technology© Getty