 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Do not fold, spindle or mutilate "Hackers" and "Viruses" in the '60s Ewart Matthews |
Today, we are distressingly familiar with hackers and viruses, and the harm they cause. Why, you may ask yourself, would a person, who must also suffer from the occasional frustration we all experience when working with computers, devote his or her time and even genius to causing others to experience these things unnecessarily.
But if you think this sort of malicious sabotage is a nineties phenomenon, think again. Even in the very early days of computer technology, when the only access to a system was through punched cards, the seeds of the current maliciousness were being sown.
In those days, a company or government department might send you a notice - in the form of a punched card - to say your rates or insurance premium or other account was now due. Usually you had to supply some additional information and return the card, along with your cheque.
Most of the necessary data was already punched into the card. So when the card was returned to the processing centre, all that had to be done was to punch in the added information. Then the company's or department's records were complete.
This practice expedited the processing of your account information, but it also enabled the companies and government departments to collect an enormous amount of data. For the most part we accepted these data collection techniques, without much argument, doing what was asked of us and taking great care not to "fold, spindle or mutilate" the cards.
Once the advertising fraternity realised the value of the collected data, we were bombarded with offerings, often with an enticing rebate, that would be ours if we would just fill in the card and turn it in with our cheques (without folding, spindling or mutilating the cards of course!).
But then, as now, some people objected to the flood of advertising or promotional material in their letter boxes. And some of them devised a method of putting a spanner in the data collection works.
Using a "uni-punch" - a cheap little device, which resembled a tiny, hole punch - an angry or disgruntled recipient of some unsolicited mail could add extra holes to the card. If the additional holes were randomly punched, the card would simply be made undecodable in the IBM card reader. But if the disgruntled recipient knew the codes used to punch in the information, he or she could alter any part of the card to read something different from what had been punched in in the first place.
Someone with a grudge could alter addresses or names and gleefully send huge orders for encyclopaedias in the name of some politician or other famous person. It's impossible to know how much trouble this practice caused, because it wasn't publicised in those days.
Because uni-punches were readily available, especially at any computer site, punching in hilarious orders for life insurance policies for R G Menzies - or some other notable person - became a favourite pastime within the industry. Creating bogus cards was so popular it overtook our previous favourite, doing cryptic crosswords. We were all experts at it, and natural competitiveness drove us to excesses, which probably did not fool anyone who received one of our doctored cards. At least I sincerely hope this was so.
Events take a serious turn
Then one day a programmer operating from Sydney sent a completed software package to the hated mob in Melbourne. For a while the program worked well, until the first of April came around that is! Once the program was started and the date typed in, it typed back on the I/O typewriter:
"Stupid Melbourne B*****s"
and would do nothing else, no matter what.
This was the first time we had seen what we now call a trojan. And I can tell you, it caused a panic, eventually requiring some fast executive action to untangle the mess.
At the time, we technicians were vastly amused, because we didn't have to fix it. We could relish visions of programmers scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how they were going to get out of a mess someone else had created.
This happened back in the 1960s and we saw many similar things happen as the years rolled by, with our programmers always responding in kind.
Looking back, I believe that this practise was the beginning of the serious problems of mischievous and malicious sabotage we see today in the computer world.
Although it starts with a sense of humour - and sometimes boredom - it builds in seriousness and intensity as two sides confront each other, upping the ante with each round of hostilities.
Now we have an enormous and costly problem on our hands and no one knows how to stop it - the source is hidden and virtually untraceable - once the impish brains of the perpetrators have been at work.
Today, when you look at a list of known computer viruses you may be looking a the greatest "growth industry" ever seen, and it's natural to wonder what the result would have been if all that creative energy had been channelled into more productive activities.
Reprinted from the June 1996 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
