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.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
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.
John Lee began with street gangs in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant before receiving a computer at age 12. By 16, he led the Masters of Deception hacker group. At 22, he was considered one of America's best hackers and was hired as a consultant. He and fellow members served one year in prison for breaking into computers of TRW, Bank of America, and Martin Marietta.
Lee described how hackers could obtain and sell personal credit records, change credit ratings, make reservations, rent limos, and take flights using stolen credit cards or making charges disappear entirely. He noted hackers could change bank balances, access insider trading information, disable phone service across areas, control gas, light, and electricity, and tap phone lines.
James LaNain, whose company developed the Describe word processing program, reported hackers had made his software available worldwide on the internet for free. He had personally invested $10 million with no profit yet realized. Software piracy was rampant, with virtually every computer program available either free or heavily discounted.
Scott Charney, head of the US Department of Justice computer crime unit, noted that unlike automobiles where adults taught children to drive, internet technology was in children's hands while adults remained largely ignorant. Neither parents nor teachers understood the technology, yet it was extremely powerful.
Military computers had been successfully hacked, with some insiders claiming military sites were less secure than universities or corporations. During Operation Desert Storm, Dutch hackers reportedly accessed US military computers for troop movement information. Hackers had accessed data on ballistic missiles and advanced aircraft design. A 16-year-old in Great Britain penetrated Griffiss Air Force Base computers.
US Air Force security teams that tested their own installations found only 3 to 5% of attacked locations ever detected the intrusions. Most hackers operated from curiosity and desire to beat the system rather than malice.
Government assessments indicated hackers were becoming better organized, rarely working alone, and developing capabilities to intercept government and corporate databases, steal secrets, and destroy communications. A percentage of the population was adapting the technology for fraud, theft, and potential injury.
Foreign intelligence services were using internet-based industrial espionage to steal secrets and advance their national economies without traditional spy operations. The internet enabled attacks from anywhere in the world without physical presence.
The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at Carnegie Mellon University, funded by the US government, advised on preventing internet break-ins. Dane Gerry, former CERT manager, stated no single entity was in charge of the internet - there was no network manager or administration at the internet level.
US law could prosecute domestic hackers, but overseas hackers operating through the internet might not face prosecution if their home countries lacked computer crime laws. The internet recognized no jurisdiction, and many countries had never addressed computer crime issues.
John Lee stated computers could never be made completely secure - risk could be reduced but security could never be guaranteed. Despite the painful experience of jail, he indicated he would repeat his hacking activities.
Internet hoaxes included claims that Microsoft was buying the Catholic Church and organ thieves kidnapping travelers to steal kidneys. These false stories spread globally and were believed by sophisticated users.
Andrew Canter, senior editor of Internet World Magazine, demonstrated how anyone could instantly publish anything online. Search engines like those indexing "TWA 800" returned results mixing legitimate coverage with conspiracy theories about cover-ups and missile strikes.
J. Orlin Grabbe, a Harvard PhD holder operating from Reno, Nevada, published conspiracy theories claiming Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was murdered and the Israeli Mossad was involved in Vince Foster's death. He operated from a bar named Area 51 and competed with established media in narrow subjects.
Andrew Canter demonstrated how easily email could be forged by rerouting messages through legitimate servers like CBS News or the White House, making forged messages appear authentic. He had notified the White House months earlier about this vulnerability but received no response.
James Alexander's eWatch service monitored hundreds of thousands of daily internet messages for over 200 major corporations, tracking all mentions including rumors and lies. The speed and reach of internet rumors had intensified - where companies once worried about 20 people hearing gossip, now 20 million could be reached instantly.
Following O.J. Simpson's acquittal, a false rumor spread that Mrs. Fields Cookies had donated sweets to his victory party. The rumor migrated across eight major newsgroups over a weekend, causing an inexplicable single-digit sales drop before the company could respond.
eWatch monitoring revealed online rumors questioning payments made to interview subject Mack Horn for a 60 Minutes story, with fabricated claims of $50,000 payments plus first-class travel and accommodations.
Debate emerged about whether internet content should be regulated, with arguments that removing inaccurate content would require trusting some authority to make decisions about what stays online. The technology's advancement made effective online policing impossible.
The internet is proving to be about the least private place on Earth. Jason Catlett, an internet entrepreneur, compares online tracking to someone putting a barcode on your shoulder every time you walk around the mall, then scanning it as you enter shops to track your movements in a database.
Advertising networks conduct surveillance by watching where users go across thousands of websites and recording what they look at in databases. These networks place tracking devices called cookies inside computers while users are online. Cookies are little files created on the operating system that users don't create themselves and generally don't know are being created. Austin Hill, president of Zero Knowledge Systems, describes cookies as a "digital tattoo" so companies can remember and recognize users when they return.
Ad networks use cookies not just to track shopping but to build elaborate profiles of what news people read and their health concerns, all to decide which ads to show. Each ad is targeted based on browsing history and the profile built about users. Two different people can visit the same site like cbs.com and see different ads based on their individual profiles.
Cookie files don't include names, just serial numbers. However, with 90% of top websites asking for personal information, ad networks can easily make matches. DoubleClick, the biggest internet ad network, owns sites that offer sweepstakes in exchange for personal information including name, address, postcode, email address, and birthday. The fine print reveals that information provided goes to DoubleClick so they can identify users by name, address, and other profile information as they move across thousands of sites.
DoubleClick and other companies offer consumers the opportunity to visit websites to opt out, but the average internet user has no idea who DoubleClick is and doesn't know they're dealing with this company. Non-internet companies like mail order firms, credit bureaus, and banks have been gathering information for years and are increasingly combining their databases with online companies.
Lori Fena heads TRUSTe, a nonprofit watchdog group created three years ago to promote online privacy. She warns that complete profiles compile everything from grocery shopping practices to news reading habits, health conditions, thought processes, and tastes on one network. The linking of online and offline databases enables scenarios like reading an investment article on a newspaper site and receiving a call from an insurance salesman ten seconds later.
The question raised is whether people who find such practices intrusive should have them forced upon them. While no one is forced to go online, people who don't participate miss out on convenience and tailored services. The more companies know about users, the better they can serve them, but this works only if users can trust the companies they're sharing information with.
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, creates data mining software that searches through mountains of raw information for valuable nuggets. MicroStrategy is testing a product where users provide travel plans and receive automatic alerts on computers or cell phones if something goes wrong, such as flight cancellations. MicroStrategy's stock reached a market value of more than $3 billion due to personalized services being seen as the wave of the future.
Saylor's philosophy is that if users give their medical history, companies can give them more life; if they share what books they read, companies can guarantee they'll never read the wrong book; and if they share flight information, companies can ensure they won't arrive two hours early to the airport. It's presented as a trade: users give information and get personalized services in return.
Millions of consumers give huge amounts of information online without knowing who's getting it or how it'll be used, especially in chat rooms and newsgroups. Deja.com keeps track of and builds archives of all newsgroup discussions, including people talking about health and emotional problems. They build "posting histories" that remain permanent records for the rest of a person's life.
Even if discussions use handles rather than real names, email addresses are visible and can be associated with individuals. Approximately 30 million people have participated in internet forums and left permanent records. Employers doing background checks can access online data supermarkets to get information about applicants' physical and financial conditions.
There are no barriers or rules on who gets access to personal data, leading to privacy problems. The only regulation is a new law protecting children's privacy online. Internet companies have fiercely opposed government regulation and embraced voluntary programs like TRUSTe, which serves as a seal of approval indicating a website has a privacy policy and explaining how to find it.
However, the TRUSTe seal doesn't guarantee privacy protection or mean companies aren't sharing or selling information to others. Lori Fena admits that self-regulation isn't enough, as there's no safety net for companies that don't choose to volunteer to give notice, consent, access, and redress.
Michael Saylor, despite his company's stake in personal information, says he's ready for government to step in. He compares it to Henry Ford supporting speed limits and stop signs, arguing that enlightened government regulation makes people more comfortable and increases usage. He believes the government needs to become educated about what's happening on the internet and make it a safe place for people.
Austin Hill's company offers a product called Freedom that lets consumers create up to five different untraceable aliases. Users can create identities for finding health information without the company knowing their real identity or the handles chosen.
Michael Saylor believes e-companies must earn people's trust by stopping snooping and tracking, asking for permission to gather information, and explaining how they plan to use it. He suggests offering people reasons to share personal information, such as promising to call if their daughter checks into an emergency room at midnight.
The concern is that companies might sell information to others without disclosure, and even the original company might not know how the data will be used. Saylor compares internet data collectors to banks, warning that if they violate depositor trust, there will be a run on the bank and it will collapse.
Data shows that when internet servers present registration forms, 50% of users turn around and leave, while another 25% fill out forms but lie about who they are. The Federal Trade Commission proposed tough new laws to protect privacy online, while internet companies proposed another self-policing initiative. The FTC and at least two states launched investigations into DoubleClick's information-gathering practices.
Once a domain created by men for men, the internet began feminizing as women became interested in online shopping. Nancy Evans and Candace Carpenter founded iVillage.com four years ago, which became the most successful website designed specifically for women. When iVillage started, women comprised 8% of the audience; by the time of this report, they represented over 40%, with estimates that 50 million more women would come online in the following year.
Women drive e-commerce, shopping online at twice the rate of men. Women do 80% of all spending, and 70% of all advertising is directed to women. iVillage's 7 million women members provide valuable market research data. Ford Motor Company discovered that 60% of their cars were bought by women and came to iVillage to ask what women want in cars rather than to sell them.
Women do not like to surf and search or play around on computers. They view computers as appliances and time-savers, disliking blinking, flashing elements and anything that takes too long to download. When iVillage asked what women wanted, the answer was help communicating with each other. iVillage's 1,500 message boards and 800 chats per month became the heart of the business.
iVillage hasn't turned a profit yet but shouldn't have, comparing itself to cable networks and magazines that take years to become profitable. In five years, iVillage expected to make money from market research, advertising, percentages of sales made on the site, and sales of their own products. When iVillage went public in March, it was instantly worth more than $2 billion.
Anita Borg heads the Institute for Women in Technology at Xerox. She notes that most people in technical careers come from a narrow slice of the population: male, white, and relatively young. The number of women majoring in computer science is decreasing. The peak was in 1984 when about 37% of undergraduate degrees in computer science and computer engineering went to women; by the time of this report, it was below 20%.
The Department of Commerce predicted the US would need over 1 million computer engineers, systems analysts, and programmers in the next six years. If women and minorities had studied computing at the same rate as men since 1984, there would be no workforce shortage.
Young women decide early that they don't want to be "nerds," though the stereotype isn't reality. Studies show young women are as interested in the impact of what they do as in how much money they make. Douglas, the women's college at Rutgers, invited 24 Girl Scouts to take a course designed to interest them in technology careers. The girls took computers apart and put them back together, learned about programming pitfalls through a peanut butter and jelly sandwich exercise, and showed that girls can be as enthusiastic about computers as boys when in the right setting.
Etan Harrell founded mamamedia.com to create learning games that little girls will love, building an internet playground for the clickerati. Studies show girls make up their minds about whether they like computers by third grade. Mama Media logs a million children under age 12 each month and uses polling to find out what kids like. If girls find their interaction with computers fun, they'll be more inclined to think about technology as a career.
Anita Borg conducts workshops where technical and non-technical women brainstorm about what they want future technology to do. Women bring richness, different perspectives, and shifts in priorities to technology creation. Companies with women designing products are more likely to appeal to the huge women's market.
According to the National Security Agency, more than 100 governments now have the ability to access, attack, and potentially disable America's computers. White House National Security Advisor Sandy Berger stated: "We're not talking about 17-year-old kids in their basement. We're talking about governments. Everything that makes this country run, electric power, oil refineries, the phone system, air traffic control, the stock market, are all dependent upon computer systems. Systems that more and more are interlinked and vulnerable to intruders through the internet." The nation's top military leaders are asking what happens if someone with a laptop in Afghanistan or Beijing uses it as a weapon in a cyber war causing chaos and disruption without ever setting foot in the United States.
In a restricted zone inside the Sandia National Laboratory in California, attacking computers and figuring out how to defend against attacks is the work of an experimental cyber team with an average age of 19. When asked to demonstrate a computer attack, the intruder found the password, broke into the computer, and hijacked it to launch the same kind of attack that crippled Yahoo and eBay earlier that year. From break-in to shutting down the system took less than 1 minute.
Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona was one of the first on Capitol Hill to recognize that the more wired the United States becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes as a cyber war target. He explained: "Our power grid now consists of a series of computerized switches that transfer power all over the country from the source of its generation to where it's needed. If those switches are interfered with and they can be interfered with as a result of this kind of hacking into the computers that regulate them, then that power can be shut off or can be sent to the wrong place resulting in blackouts." According to the President's Commission on critical infrastructure protection, the right command sent to a power station control computer could be just as devastating as a backpack full of explosives.
Richard Clarke is the White House Coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism. He projected a scenario where a drug cartel in Colombia could threaten an information warfare attack on Houston. Information warfare is just another way of saying cyber war. One weak spot is the increased reliance of refineries, power plants, and water systems on SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems. These centralized control systems make it easier to cause serious damage and disruption by shutting down water flow to New York City or starting refinery fires in Texas from a laptop halfway around the world.
This is the Pentagon's Global Network Operations Center at the Defense Information Systems Agency. Here US military personnel deliberately attack and penetrate defense computers to test the system, and they succeed more than half the time. They also track intruders probing Pentagon computers. General John Campbell runs the Pentagon's Joint Task Force on Computer Network Defense. In 1999, they saw about 22,000 instances that were reported up to their level, up from about 5,000 in 1998.
General Campbell told that three years ago in a cyber war exercise called Eligible Receiver, the Pentagon's red team, using what any hacker could find on the internet, was able in theory to knock out power in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and New York. The team was authorized to probe 40,000 Pentagon systems. It broke into 4,000 of them, actually disrupting some military activities. The red team got into virtually the full range of systems, including email systems. In one case, the hackers actually changed the content of a message from an order to execute an activity to an order to not execute that activity.
Before the internet, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado was the nation's ultimate sanctuary. Forty years ago, the Pentagon began blasting away 700,000 tons of granite to protect the military's top nuclear command from enemy attack. These steel doors can withstand a 30-megaton blast, but in a cyber war, they won't protect the military's computers. Even the Pentagon's most secure classified computer system, which has no links to the internet, was invaded last year by a virus transferred into the system from a disk on a laptop.
Admiral Herbert Brown, Deputy Commander of Space Command in charge of cyber warfare, says his job has been to prevent a cyberspace Pearl Harbor. When asked how many countries have the capability to wage cyber warfare against the United States, he replied: "Virtually any country that has a computer has an opportunity to enter into cyberspace and be disruptive." He confirmed the vulnerabilities are real, using the analogy of his 1961 Corvette without computer problems versus his wife's new automobile with computer systems that can bring it to a complete standstill.
One country concentrating on cyber war is China. It's already sparring in cyberspace with Taiwan. Just last month, the Chinese Army Daily warned: "Perhaps one day people will wake up in the morning to find out all the phone systems are down, computers hacked by viruses, the state treasury being emptied." Bill Triplett, a senior staffer on Capitol Hill monitoring cyber warfare and a specialist on the Chinese military, believes the Chinese probably have the biggest program from the standpoint of being able to attack US infrastructure.
US forces which invented cyber warfare have already fought computer battles against the Serbs. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs says the US launched a successful information warfare attack to confuse and disable the Yugoslav air defense system. They inserted false messages in targets to protect NATO aircraft. One US official disclosed that President Milosevic's friends were targeted for harassment. After President Clinton issued a finding, the CIA was instructed to wage a cyber war against Milosevic himself.
For a year, the Pentagon has been picking up probes into sensitive defense computers coming from Russia. Code name Moonlight Maze, some regard it as Russian espionage. Others say it's impossible to tell. Russia may just be the last stop in someone else's hacker trail. The White House is watching closely, with officials describing what's going on throughout the world as cyber war reconnaissance where many nations, at least half a dozen, are scanning each others' networks to get a good map of where the key things are and what the key vulnerabilities are of those networks.
Jeff Fay is a top hacker who now works for infrastructure defense, an advisor to the National Security Agency. He breaks into networks in order to protect them. He states: "Most systems I can find a vulnerability 30 minutes tops." He demonstrated that if he wanted to get into an office computer, he could already be in and move around the CBS network without detection. He can crack encrypted passwords and get original passwords back, usually within 24 hours. He believes the Pentagon may be just as vulnerable now as it was three years ago when its red team hackers in exercise Eligible Receiver were so successful that they actually managed to disrupt operations of the Pacific Fleet.
Some say the air traffic control system is also a problem. Radar images can be changed. Planes can be erased from the screens and false data inserted in the National Weather Service could confuse and misdirect pilots causing chaos in the air. Richard Clarke in the White House says it's a threat the government can't defend against all by itself: "The owners and operators of electric power grids and pipelines and banks and railroads, they're the ones who have to defend our infrastructure. The government doesn't own it, the government doesn't operate it, the government can't defend it. This is the first time where we've had a potential foreign threat to the United States where the military can't save us."
When someone at 60 Minutes asked where cyberspace was, Andy volunteered to go find out. He decided to get on the internet after receiving a disc for his computer. He asked Joe Wilmont, one of CBS's best computer experts, to help him get online. Joe explained the process of loading it up on Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, setting up an account, and configuring the modem correctly. Andy was confused about terms like "com port" and "modem configuration." Joe explained that a com port is a serial port used to hook up external devices like a mouse or modem, with certain protocols for specific services.
When asked what kind of stuff one could get on the internet, Joe mentioned recipes like chicken soup, making friends, and starting up relationships electronically. Andy responded that he already had friends and relationships. Joe suggested going downstairs where they have internet in house, but Andy wanted it in his office and questioned why he would need to go downstairs. Joe explained that the internet is still a house under construction.
They went to CompUSA where they met expert Ken Morrell. Andy asked if he would be able to do this himself at home alone, and Ken replied that he would need to know what to look for. Andy admitted he didn't know what to look for. They went through the startup routine and batch file process. When the disc was inserted and the computer turned on, it read the program. Andy asked what a web page was, and Ken explained it's a site on the internet that you can create yourself. Andy was surprised to learn he could have his own website on the internet.
Andy successfully logged into America Online and got onto the internet. He noted that it was pretty easy to get into once you get up and running. He reflected that when he started, a lot of people probably thought the internet would be too complicated, and he hoped he had set their minds at ease.
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