Early stories about the internet | 60 Minutes Full Episodes
In a Nutshell
Mid-1990s hackers routinely breached corporate, military, and government networks to steal data and disrupt systems, while the internet lacked any central authority or effective security. Foreign governments developed cyber warfare capabilities to target critical infrastructure like power grids and air traffic control, with U.S. tests showing most intrusions went undetected. Online tracking through cookies and data collection created permanent digital profiles of users with minimal privacy protections, while women emerged as the dominant force in e-commerce despite declining female participation in tech careers.
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Thirty million Americans were using the internet in the mid-1990s, with hackers able to access credit records, medical records, and corporate business strategies. The internet connected computers belonging to corporations, government agencies, universities, and private individuals, all vulnerable to intrusion.
Allen Brill of Kroll Associates warned that companies joining the information superhighway face risks including carjackings, drive-by shootings, and dangerous rest stops. Over recent months, hackers had penetrated computer files of scores of top US corporations, accessing sensitive strategic information. They also breached the US National Weather Service systems, coming close to shutting down or damaging computers that provided aviation weather forecasts.
Most hackers were children of the computer age obsessed with cyberspace, gathering monthly at the Citicorp building in New York to exchange news about internet penetrations and techniques. Emmanuel Goldstein, publisher of hacker magazine 2600, claimed 99.9% of hackers were non-destructive and motivated by curiosity about how computer systems operate, insisting they don't hurt things.
Alan Brill demonstrated how easily passwords could be uncovered using programs originally developed for law enforcement that had leaked onto the internet. These programs identified passwords by analyzing electronic patterns that stood out from regular text. Brill recovered a test password "Zena" within seconds, granting access to all files.
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