Electronic Emancipation aka The 1337NMEs

We'll be kicking off this year with a special look at what is regarded as probably the fastest-moving and most over-hyped sector of IT and networking these days - cybersecurity.  I say cybersecurity, but effectively it's just plain old "security" these days if your role/job concerns looking after or using pretty much anything that has a plug on one end and more than two buttons on the other.

We'll look at how security affects you, what you should worry about, and how worried you should be.  We'll look at some brief history, the changes over the years, and what the future might hold.  We'll also look at The Hacker ©, his many differing hats and the ethics of "non-Ethical" Ethical Hacking, and the Non-Hacking Ethical's Ethics.  Or something.  So yeah.

Today we kick off with how things have changed over the past quarter of a century (holy shit... I suddenly feel incredibly old having written that...)....

1995 - The Start

This is of course not the start of cybersecurity, but it is the start of the modern-day security-centric IT environment.  This was the year that saw the release of the Sony PlayStation, the release of the VHS-killer DVD, the release of this fantastic (note sarcasm) platform-independant language called Java, the prevalence of a SECOND "Internet Browser" program, and the release of the most insecure operating system ever conceived - Windoze 95.  While the internet and indeed the World Wide Web both existed at this time, they were very different beasts from what we have today.  The old bulletin board BBS-type services were becoming interconnected - you would connect via dial-up modem and your AOL/CompuServe/Minitel/MSN program to the AOL/MSN whatever network as before, but now these networks were starting to open themselves up and providing portals to global e-mail services, ftp servers and the incredibly popular USENET newsgroups/mailing lists.  Also just bursting onto the scene were two new shiny programs that essentially did the same as each other - to access and explore this exciting new-fangled way of sharing and presenting information invented by some genius Brit called the World Wide Web.  Win95 was the first OS that shipped with a web browser.  Although some would argue it was not the first to ship with a working web browser.  

In these dark days of yore, one did not get hacked unless one was a University, Government Organisation or Technology/Telecoms giant.  This is because they were the only entities large enough or rich enough to have anything able to be hacked; a) a multi-user system, b) a multi-user system on a network and c) a multi-user system on a network able to be accessed from a remote location.

Also, the number of hackers in existence all these millennia ago were miniscule, too.  And those that were around were of a much more aristocratic caste than that which the pastime attracts in today's rabble of whippersnappers.  Back then, the only budget home computer that came with a TCP/IP stack was the old Apple ][, making it the perfect tool for any aspiring hacker.  The next OS that shipped with a TCP/IP stack was Windows 95.  I don't even remember hearing the words TCP/IP in relation to my old faithful Commodore-Amiga until around this time.

So, that's 1995 dealt with....  Next up, we'll fast-forward 5 chronological years, and take a paradigm shift in terms of threat and defence....