Hacking Away!
Unless you’ve been contemplating your navel since the beginning of May, you are aware of the hacking of the Colonial Pipeline computer system. To recap the story, Colonial Pipeline is a Texas-based firm that provides automobile, truck, and jet fuel to the southeastern United States. The hack halted delivery of the fuel through the pipeline; and even though Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom within hours of the attack ($5 million), the software fix provided by the hackers took six days to reopen the pipeline. It wasn’t pretty.
Hacking isn’t anything new, and we hear about hacks of computer systems fairly regularly. Of course, what we tend to hear are major hacks usually tied to some sinister-sounding organization with alleged ties to unfriendly foreign governments. But there are many other hacking stories the news sources don’t report. These less worthy of reporting stories range from the hacking of individuals’ email and social media accounts—and I imagine you know of people (possibly yourself) this has happened to—to hacks of businesses, police departments, the Vatican, and local, state, and federal government agencies. The term “hacking” itself, as we tend to use it today, was born in 1963 in an article published by an in-house newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but it took twenty years to enter common usage. Incidentally, back in 1963 and for several years afterward, the term had a positive connotation.
Even though the very idea of hacking offends me, my continuing quest to find the lighter side of everything convinced me to aim my Amusement Detector at the history of hacks to see if I could find anything. It didn’t take long, and here are a few:
Although a computer wasn’t involved, it could be said that the first hack took place in 1903 when The Royal Academy of Sciences wanted to demonstrate Guglielmo Marconi’s newest invention, the telegraph, which was described as a device capable of sending private messages anywhere almost immediately. The telegraph operator in London began to send a message to the group waiting anxiously in Cornwall, about 200 miles away. Despite what the operator tried to send, what the Cornwall crowd received was one word—rats—repeated many times over and over before turning into a limerick that began “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.” Credit for the hack went to Nevil Maskelyne, an inventor and magician who wanted to prove this newfangled system couldn’t promise privacy. He succeeded.
In 2010, Attila Nemeth, a young man in Hungary, was trying to get a job with the U.S.A.-based security division of Marriott International. It seemed a good idea to Attila to send a highly malicious code to the division’s computer and threaten with damage unless he was hired. The division set up Mr. Nemeth with a profile page on their Website and requested he fill it in with the information required for employment. He jumped at this wondrous opportunity and promptly provided all pertinent information including details from his passport. The company just as promptly referred all the info to the F.B.I.
Sometimes hacking is used for good purpose as was evidenced in 2011 by none other than Great Britain’s MI6, made famous for being the home of super spy, James Bond. Having located a detailed 67-page online manual for constructing pipe bombs that was uploaded by the terrorist group al-Qaeda, MI6 opted to hack the document rather than simply taking it down. What did they do, you ask? Let’s just say that would-be pipe bombers found themselves with 67 pages of instructions for baking cupcakes that had been taken from Ellen DeGeneres’s “Best Cupcakes in America.” Rumor has it the terrorists weren’t amused (and they probably gained weight). As an ironic footnote, both the original pipe bomb formula and cupcake recipes called for the use of sugar.
Ever since Iran made its nuclear intentions obvious, various individuals and governments have been accused of targeting that country’s nuclear facility computers. One notable hack occurred during the summer of 2012 when Iran’s computers shut down and the song “Thunderstruck” by the Australian heavy metal band AC/DC began playing day and night through the facility’s loudspeakers. I have it on good authority that the clerics who run the country failed to appreciate the lyrics or loud music.
It was in 2003 when Vogue, that venerable and long-standing standard bearer for fashion, found its Website had been hacked. Visitors scrolling through the Website found themselves seeing happy velociraptors showing up on the pages wearing various types of highly stylish chapeaux (both women’s and men’s styles). Some of the dinosaurs wearing women’s hats also sported lovely bows.
Last, but definitely not least, in 2014 a group of hackers in San Francisco got into the city’s public works department’s database and changed electronic highway signs to display, “GODZILLA ATTACK! TURN BACK!” For reasons unknown, the warning failed to convince any drivers to immediately flee the city. Since then, many municipalities have seen their road signs’ and electronic billboards’ travel alerts compromised and replaced with often amusing, sometimes offensive, messages. Gee, I wonder if I can find any to show to you …
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
