A look at the origins of laws against cyber crime.
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The malicious association with hacking became evident in the 1970s when early computerized phone systems became a target. Technologically savvy individuals, called “phreakers” discovered the correct codes and tones that would result in free long distance service. They impersonated operators, dug through Bell Telephone company garbage to find secret information, and performed countless experiments on early telephone hardware in order to learn how to exploit the system. They were hackers in every sense of the word, using their resourcefulness to modify hardware and software to steal long distance telephone time.
This innovative type of crime was a difficult issue for law enforcement, due in part to lack of legislation to aid in criminal prosecution, and a shortage of investigators skilled in the technology that was being hacked. It was clear that computer systems were open to criminal activity, and as more complex communications became available to the consumer, more opportunities for cyber crime developed.
In 1986 the systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Clifford Stoll, noted certain irregularities in accounting data. Inventing the first digital forensic techniques, he determined that an unauthorized user was hacking into his computer network. Stoll used what is called a “honey pot tactic,” which lures a hacker back into a network until enough data can be collected to track the intrusion to its source. Stoll’s effort paid off with the eventual arrest of Markus Hess and a number of others located in West Germany, who were stealing and selling military information, passwords and other data to the KGB.
The Berkeley lab intrusion was soon followed by the discovery of the Morris worm virus, created by Robert Morris, a Cornell University student. This worm damaged more than 6,000 computers and resulted in estimated damages of $98 million. More incidents began to follow in a continuous, steady stream. Congress responded by passing its first hacking-related legislation, the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in 1986. The act made computer tampering a felony crime punishable by significant jail time and monetary fines.
