[Delightful sounds of bits]
[Shifiting, Parisian jazz]
John T Draper is a familiar name in the hacking community, mainly because he was one of the
first members of the public to hack, uninvited into a remote system. In the 60s he discovered
that a toy whistle in a packet of Cap'n Crunch could produce a perfect 2,600Hz tone, and
*2,600Hz tone*
by sounding it down a telephone, it enabled him to obtain free long distance phone calls.
This was a method of controlling telephone switches through a method known as 'phreaking',
which actually led to his imprisonment. Thereby becoming one of the first criminal "hackers".
Fast forward to the 1980s, and with modems and personal computers popping up left, right
and centre, a new glorious world was opening up, with films such as WarGames capturing
this wonderful new world of hacking potential.
"I don't think I deserved an F, do you?"
[keyboard and modem sounds]
By 1990, a great war was occurring behind
the scenes, between some of the largest hacking groups. On one side The Legion of Doom...
(or at least a splinter faction after their purported demise)
and on the other side, the Masters of Deception. Each group trying to outdo the other with more ingenious
and elaborate hacks. Because as well as political motivation, revenge, demonstration or simply
dislike, simple notoriety was high on the list of reasons to hack. However, with notoriety
comes visibility, and it wasn't long before the FBI were on their tracks, with members
of both groups, including the head of Masters of Deception, Mark Abene, ending up behind
bars for several years. Sympathies among other hackers and a feeling of injustice for hackers
receiving more time than serious crimes with real world victims of course would lead to
more hacks.
With the rise of the internet, the hacking playgroud was growing, and to police this
playground laws were brought into place to try and keep order, including the Computer
Misuse Act of 1990. These were tentative days, filled with Geocities, Altavista, Ask Jeeves,
low resolution, low colour GIFs, MORE GIFs, NEVER ENDING GIFs, crap fonts, oh, and lots
of keyword spamming. This was a domain, if you'll excuse the pun, where many people were
just getting to grips with what they were doing, and so, as you'd expect, knowledge
was thin on the ground. This was never more apparent than system and website security.
[mysterious electronic tones]
So then, welcome then to my top Website hacks of the 1990s. Before we begin, just be sure
to flex your neck muscles so you can look away when appropriate.
20th September 1996, and the CIA website. Now here's what it should look like, you can
see the red writing "Unauthorized modification of any information stored on this system may
result in criminal prosecution".... annnnd, here's what it looked like shortly after.
Now this is a hack by Swedish group Power Through Resistance. This was in response to
Swedish prosecutor Bo Skarinder, prosecuting five people for hacking earlier that week.
You can see their message stating "F*ck you to the Central Intelligence Agency World Wide
Web site... but we already know you're all lame assholes". Now, this is a demonstration
of hackers banding together, and supporting their own in the best way they know how to,
and although it didn't remain up for long, it was enough to reach CNN news at the time.
You can see the usual links are long gone, and instead we can navigate to "The Hacker's
Defense Foundation", "Flashback News Agency" and a few more links including... NUDE GIRLS.
You'll find this is a running theme throughout hacked sites of the 90s.
OK 12th December 1996 and we cross the pond for the British Labour Party. Here's how Tony
Blair looked originally, in this sparse, but easy to navigate site... and here we are POST
hack. AS you can see, nothing has changed.
Oh, my bad, some links have changed. We've got "The Budget Response: More of those lies
all parties feed you close to an election", "The Road to nowhere?". "New Information (Same
Old Lies, New Packaging) and so on... along with a nice "Hacked Labour" image. At the
time you might have been hard pressed to spot the difference, but here we have a politically
motivated hack - albeit a light hearted one - by the group AOHP.
[Twang that guitar]
It's only fair that we then visit the Conservative Party page on 27th April 1997. Here's the
Right Honourable John Major MP, looking much like John Major and then....well, again, it's
hard to notice the difference.
"Just kidding!"
Now here we have a much more focused political attack,
with a long message. It basically boils down to;
The Conservatives claiming that all communications breakthroughs started under Conservative Governments,
and the hackers pointing out that they had nothing to do with the breakthroughs, they
just happened to be in power. There also seems to be an EU flag, which seems appropriate.
Now back across the pond, this one is interesting, if only for the fact that it stayed up for
an entire week. This was an time when IT was slow to act, more than likely outsourced and
probably very little knowledge of who was running it. It's the Legal Employment Network
who apparently...
"SPECIALIZE IN PROVIDING LEGAL EMPLOYMENT !!!!
TO H**KERS AND STR*PPERS SO THEY CAN FU....." yeah, you get the idea. Anyway this was hacked
by the individuals MadS/WarB/PoweRT/Del/KNS. Nice work lads.
Now here we have, probably the most targeted organisation on the web, in this part of the
90s at least. It had been hacked twice in December 1996 by \\StOrM\\, leaving somewhat graphical content
But it was also very possibly the first time that a hacked site had used Javascript and frames
You remember frames don't you?
They used to be all the rage in the 90s. They allowed you to have different sections of a website page you could scroll at your own will.
Anyway, here was now a different hack on the 5th March 1997. This time, we have the sympathetic
pleas of H4G1S (or Hagis), acknowledging the plight of Kevin Mitnick, one of the most notorious
hackers of the time, and actually the first hacker to appear on an FBI Most Wanted poster,
for wire fraud and various other hacks within the preceding 2 years. Good on you Kevin.
The page states that he's been rotting in a prison cell for 2 years, over his desire
to learn, and still hasn't gone to trial.
It also talks of Ed Cummings, thrown into prison for possessing nothing more than a
couple of pieces of electronics from radio shack. If that's the case, then I am in a
WHOLE HEAP of bother.
[Chilled electronic musica]
8th December 1997, and it was Yahoo's turn. Now this was no small fry, because Yahoo was
a huge player back in the 90s. It was one of the main portals to the web, offering email,
news and a pretty good search engine, for the time...
"Do you errr, Yahoo?"
So anyone who could pull of an attack here was, well,
clearly the head of their class.
It would take the combined powers of PANTZ and H4GiS to try and hold the US Government
to ransom, by demanding the release of, you guessed it Kevin Mitnick.
"For the past month, anyone who has viewed Yahoo's page & used their search engine, now
has a logic bomb/worm implanted deep within their computer", that's the fear tactic which
was used here, with an offer of an antidote program if Kevin is released.
an interesting attack, which was clearly false and relied on fear.
The only problem
was this hack was only up for 15 minutes and could only be seen by certain browsers. Comments
on the CNN message board relating to this were;
"By the way, who was this infamous "imprisoned comrade" these geeks wanted released? Does
anyone know? Knowing who it was would be a good way to track down the hackers." from
Grant Webster, thank you Grant
and... the deciphering of the alphanumeric part of the ransom to read "hey mister security
expert.. if you're so ? , how come you're always getting owned by US anklebiters?"
But the best bit here is what their Virus would do. Apparently one of the functions
was it "will cause an acceleration of clocks to the year 2000"
[Sad, Auld Lang Syne music]
*Rocket blast*
YES, they used the millennium
bug as a threat... ohhhh, no ANYTHING BUT THAT. It just goes to show how much fear and
frenzy was whipped up concerning the Y2k critter, which as we know, actually did very little.
[Upbeat comical jazz]
Popping back to 27th May and we visit the Jurassic Park: Lost World promotional site.
Now here's a back by the originally named "hackers" which was up for 12 hours, just
4 days as the movie opened. Now if this was for the original film, then I'd be upset,
but this is the Lost World... so the sentiment is entirely justified.
14th November 1997 and it's the turn of the Spice Girls, or at least the Spice World page
of their website... you remember that movie don't you?
"Here we go, the backlash has started"
Yeah, of course you do!
Essentially this is a hack to plee for them to stop making music, courtesy
of Team CodeZero. I don't know about you, but I'm quite partial to some....
*Severely distorted audio* Slam it to the left, if you're having a good time...
...shake it to the right.
[deadpan] It's amazing how much clipping music in the 90s had.
OK, so how about something a little more serious. A website which you might think would have
the highest security possible and therefore be completely "unhackable"... Well hello there
US Army. The day is Sunday 8th March 1998, and those sly little dogs the No|d Crew have
been hard at work hacking three separate United States Army servers. They took little time
in promoting how incredible their hack had been.
"This is were it happens. Where some of the most advanced U.S. Army software is developed.
This hack is once again proving that any network no matter how large is exploitable.".. I like
your jib NOID.
The aim of this hack seems to be to actually alert the public about how exploitable these
pages are, and potentially how easy it is to get at sensitive information. It wasn't
up for long, but to make sure they got the point across, the next day they went after
the US Navy, detailing their views on how, well, crap the government is at keeping their
sh*t secure.
I guess the person they really should have been talking to was Clinton..... if he wasn't
too occupied that is.
[Nonchalant jazz]
Welcome to MonicaLewinsky dot com, hacked by Magic FX on the 5th March 1999.
The original isn't even a proper site. It's more of a holding page, registered on behalf
of Ms. Lewinsky. However, she never took up the offer to use it and explain her story,
so it was hacked to this...
This was right after Ms. Lewinsky had informed an entire nation, well actually, the world,
that the President's wife "couldn't do it for him".
"Yes!"
-"You did?"
"Yes!"
Here then we have a fervid supporter
of, well, decency I guess, because both Lewinskey and Clinton are given are thorough telling
off in the following paragraphs...
"The whole situation makes me sick. What has happened to this country? The president is
supposed to be a role model for the youth of america and what does he do?".... if you
ask me, we need to bring this kind of hacking back. Now people just put out Youtube videos,
or send out a tweet to share there feelings. Back in the 90s, you had to hack a god damn
website to tell the world what you thought. You had to know what you were doing. At the
very least, it ensured those who wanted to be heard, learnt some technical skills along
the way.
Oh, incidentally, the same day P*ssy-Power dot com was also hacked. Similar theme.
[Musak begins]
Even though this video is based around events which happened.. 20 years ago.
and websites which no longer exist
Youtube refused to monestise it
So instead, I've opted for a relevant sponsor.
After all, what better than to go with a company invested in the freedom of our internet?
Surfshark VPN is the name, and Icannot stress how important it is to have a VPN for all kinds of situations!
For one, I've been the victim of online fraud before
and if you're using public Wi-Fi hotspots, so could you.
The internet is a very different place to what it was in the '90s!
Back then it was a naive, homely, hobby filled place, which was filled with glee and wonder.
But now, where-ever you go, you're tracked.
You're tracked by your location.
You're tracked by your choices.
and that means you're blocked from some services in other countries.
Surfshark will protect you from all of this.
What's more Surfshark appears to be the cheapest you can get this level of protection
We're talking $1.99 a month for unlimited connections.
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Nice!
This isn't the '90s, so get yourself protected and follow the link below.
and I guess now, we can get back, to the nineties!
*grunts approvingly to self*
Which brings me onto the final hack for this episode. Occuring on the 4th April 1999, and
spread across several famous domains, including Playboy, Sprint, Yellow Pages, Sony Music
and even h*rnyrob dot com. Yep, I know what you're thinking. Not h*rnyrob. But when you're
as h*rny as Rob apparently was, web security has a tendency to slide.
The replacement is this site featuring a UK flag, emblazoned with "Yorkshire Posse", big
ups mate! But the main theme is explained here...
"As you read this, the RCMP, NASA and the FBI are persecuting a man in Sudbury, Ontario
with 99 criminal charges. Just what exactly did he do?... Well, Read on and be skooled!"
This is the cum-uppence for Jason Mewhiney, for apparently defacing the NASA web page?
[Windows triumphant sound!]
You remember we've just spoken about it. It appears the Yorkshire Posse are making a declaration of war agianst all
who would challenge the freedom of Canadians with such ludicrous actions! We have broken
into your phone companies, your breweries, everything you hold sacred!
Wait a second... breweries. These lads are making a serious political statement and they're
off for a slash up. You can tell they're from Yorkshire.
[Rising electronic sounds of whim]
Anyway, that's enough hacking for now. It feels like hacking sites in this way is a
past-time we've let go of. A way of life that we've replaced with social media and shouting
into a void. It's a shame, but at least we can look back and re-live it through the magic
of Youtube. Maybe if we had that in the 90s, things would have been very different. I mean,
for the one, the buffering times and quality would have been utterly disastrous....
If you liked this video, please let me know by thumbing up or down, our leaving a hack that you've heard of from the past
and then maybe, we can look at some more top internet hacks of the 90s. There's certainly plenty
more to see, let me tell you.
and I've seen some horrible, horrible things....
*silence*
*pulls self back together* errr, anyway...
Thanks for watching, have a great evening.
[Music to see you out friend]