
A Tale of Hacking, Before the Internet Existed - davidhbolton
https://01.media/a-tale-of-hacking-before-the-internet-existed
======
GnarfGnarf
The Montreal Metro subway went into operation in 1967, the year of Expo. Bus
tickets were coated with a magnetic strip, but the transfers were punched with
holes like computer paper tape. The holes represented the date and time the
transfer had been issued. I gathered discarded transfers, studying the pattern
of holes.

Within a week, I had identified the coding scheme. To test my theory one day
after school, I took a transfer that had been issued in the morning, taped
some holes shut to represent the current time, and marched up to a turnstyle.
With my heart pounding, I shoved the doctored transfer into the slot. Clunk!
went the machine as it accepted the transfer and released the gate. What a
thrill! I was a hit with my classmates as I issued them with counterfeit
tickets. The amount saved was minor. It was the fun of outwitting the system
that gave me satisfaction.

I prepared a template from a folded strip of tin can. I pre-drilled all the
positions, then used a 5/32" bit to punch out daily transfers. The grinding
soon enlarged the holes to the point where they were out of registration, so I
ordered a custom punch from the U.S.

------
bungie4
Our local public library put its card catalog online accessible by direct
dial. It ran on a microVAX. I'm on it one day and somebody picked up the phone
while i was connected. A burst of high bit characters found me looking at the
root prompt.

Being a good guy I printed out some stuff as proof and brought it in to him.
:D It was a simple fix but man he just about crapped himself when told he was
hacked!

~~~
bitwize
In other words you confessed to a felony under the CFAA. Hope this was before
1986!

~~~
HNmanach
He didn't access it intentionally, and as broad as "protected computer" is,
it's hard to say that a public library computer has a role in interstate
commerce. I think he's fine.

(a)(2) is the relevant clause, I think:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030)

~~~
justinjlynn
> or exceeds authorized access

that is broad enough to cover this case, if intentionally only applies to
access. I am not familiar with case law in this regard -- tread carefully.

I am not a lawyer. Even if I was, I would certainly not be _your_ lawyer.

ref:
[https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/criminal/...](https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/criminal/articles/summer2013-1013-glitches-
within-cfaas-exceeds-authorized-access-language.html)

------
pklausler
Back in the 70's my high school library installed a magnetic anti-theft
system. I don't remember all of the details, but it involved a small metal
strip in each book that was demagnetized when books were checked out and
remagnetized when they were returned and reshelved.

It was possible to return a book from within the stacks. This made a neat hack
possible: find a book with multiple copies, check one out (demagnetizing it),
bring it back into the shelves, reshelve it with the library card from its
mate, and then return the mate from within the stacks. There would then be a
demagnetized copy sitting on the shelves.

We were good kids, so we didn't steal anything, but it sure was fun to
demonstrate to the staff that one could walk into the stacks, grab a book, and
walk out right past the magnetic alarm without setting it off.

------
tyingq
The standard ploy for a room full of terminals was to write a program that
presented fake login and password prompts, collected the data, then printed
whatever the standard "wrong password" message was, then exit.

------
admiraln
I have a similar tale of crashing the University mainframe. We had a CDC 6600
and then later a CDC Cyber model that was software compatible with 6600. This
system had a front end from Modcomp. All the terminals were on this system and
connected to the NOS OS on the CDC.

During a project to build a microprocessor (6809) based Front end to the front
end I got permission to use additional features of the Modcomp. With Modcomp
manuals in hand and 6809 code ready to go into "Transparent Mode" I ran my
code for the first time. Nothing happened, or at least not what I expected.
The RJE station on the floor had tradition of Turning off the lights if the
6600 was not accessible. I checked and they were dark. Dam my bad luck, Just
when I was testing my code. Fifteen minutes later with the connection back I
ran it again. Again nothing and yes the lights went out again. I slowly put 2
and 2 together and made a phone call, reluctantly. They screamed at me, ... a
lot, but I did have permission. I gave them my code. Several days later they
told me to run it again. Suddenly nothing happened again but the good news was
the RJE lights stayed on. My code never ran right but at least I wasn't
Crashing the Mainframe.

------
rb808
I like the 2600Hz phone phreaking stories, how people could whistle the codes
into the phone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box)

~~~
dghughes
There's a good article (the Wikipedia article and sources have most of it)
around somewhere about the meeting of Captain Crunch and Joybubbles, who was
blind and had perfect pitch. And how they altered the Captain Crunch toy by
drilling a hole in it then when the phone system went digital they created the
blue box.

Some of the stories how they could cause a telephone to go live and listen in
to people at home. Virtual meeting rooms party line where phone phreaks from
all over the US would meet.

It's amazing stuff. Worthy of a movie.

~~~
digi_owl
All because the telcos operated with "security through obscurity" back then.

You had things like switches being equipped with modems on unlisted numbers
that sent the caller straight to a root prompt.

The biggest hilarity perhaps would be payphones where you could record the
tones of the coins being inserted, and then play them back to get effectively
free calls.

------
bitwize
One of my favorite stories is about when Marconi was demonstrating his new
wireless telegraph, and someone came in on the same frequency sending
insulting messages about Marconi. Not only did the interloper illustrate that
radio is vulnerable to interference, he committed one of the first examples of
trolling on electronic media.

~~~
lb1lf
Note that 'frequency' should be interpreted in the loosest possible manner;
early transmitters were of the spark gap variety - basically generating an
unlimited amount of wide-band noise, anything operating on a nominal frequency
close to that of another transmitter would interfere with it no end.

------
MurrayHill1980
"Before the Internet existed?" You make that sound like such a long time ago!!
Meanwhile I see there's another Ycombinator news item in which someone
discovered the "HERE IS" key on Teletype ASR-33s (which I believe one pressed
to automatically read the already-punched papertape with the code to identify
your "Station".) Again from pre-Internet days when mighty dinosaurs still
roamed the earth writing games on Teletypes on IMSAI-8080 computers and
pirated copies of Microsoft 8K Basic.

------
liberte82
I had the book in the picture as a kid or one very similar to it. I was too
young but my older brother used to type those games into our Apple 2C and we'd
play them. Later my older sister taught me how to make madlib programs on the
2C and I'd make those for my friends when they came over. They taught me
everything about computers and somehow I'm the one who ended up a developer.
:) I remember how much it used to bug me when I'd forget a step in my BASIC
programs and have to insert a step on the '5'.

------
lb1lf
No mention of early hacking is complete without someone chiming in, saying
what an excellent read Steven Levy's "Hackers" is - starting off with the
shenanigans of MIT Tech Model Railroad Club members in the fifties, he follows
the hacker movement - if one can call it that - Captain Crunch, Marvin Minsky,
Woz - it reads like a who's who. Lots of amusing and at times educational
anecdotes, all written in Levy's eminently readable prose.

------
timthorn
Would love to know which university this was. Having grown up with a parent
working in a university computer service through the 70s & 80s I do wonder if
this is close to home.

------
jdlyga
I too had a Game Genie :)

~~~
digi_owl
I picked up the NES variant at the tail end of my school years. Had a bit of
fun with it, but nothing like the control that memory searches in emulators
can offer me these days.

