Believe it or not, hacking started with phones. It was called Phone Phreaking and is considered today as the art of cracking a phone network to make it do what you want like a free long-distance call. At first they used clicking sounds to mimic the pulses generated by the rotary dial and fool the phone system into calling. Eventually tones were used to manipulate the frequencies that the computerized phone system used. This led to all these Blue boxes to pop up where people used an electronic device to simulate a telephone operator’s dialing console.
By this point a large crack down happen and since the beginning of hacking in the sixties, many people went to jail … but some didn’t. The ones that continued their “hobby”, where led into the world of computers thru hacking phone systems. As with the rest of corporate america, large companies like the phone system were getting computerized. And to a hacker that meant a whole new set of interesting challenges. A group that follow in these steps called themselves Homebrew Computer Club and started in the San Francisco bay area. In the beginning, computers were large and expensive, therefore difficult to hack into if you could not get your hands on one. Homebrew Computer Club eventually figured it out and created their own machines that they could not only program at home, but also build and modify the computer hardware at home. It is this group of hackers, which includes legendary figures such as Lee Felsenstein, Steve Dompier, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates that formed the building blocks for the personal computer industry and why you are reading this on your iphone, laptop or ipad today.
To think that hacking is what started the foundation of this computer your reading from makes the Hacking community look a bit different. But now fast forward to 2011 and if you have not heard the hacking group Anonymous, it won’t be much time before you do. Anonymous originated in 2003 and is increasingly associated with collaborative, international hacktivism, undertaking protests and other actions, often with the goal of promoting internet freedom and freedom of speech. If you think that doesn’t affect you, read up on how the websites of the government of Tunisian, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco were targeted by Anonymous in support of the Arab Spring Revolution. And today, how several contingents of Anonymous have given vocal support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, with vast numbers of members attending local protests and several blogs run by members covering the movement extensively. To most recently the group taking down 40 child porn sites and published the names of over 1500 people frequenting those websites.
To say that Hackers only affect the world when they are “stealing” online information is an a understatement. The origins and current activity of Hacker communities is shaping the world we live in from your iphone to your next government.
