What was one of the earliest recorded computer related crimes?

Answer 1

Who would ever imagine that a free toy in a box of cereal would be the springboard for cyber fraud. 'Cyber,' an abbreviation of the word cybernetics - the science of communication and automatic control in both machines and living things, was the descriptive fraud committed by John Draper, a rather quirky individual who initially had fun more in his mind than premeditated malicious acts of fraud.

In the early sixties, as Mr Draper sat at his breakfast table, gobbling down his morning sustenance of sugar-infused breakfast cereal, he did what many men find themselves doing, placing the cereal box in front of them and reading the marketing propaganda whilst they eat. He discovered that he was the beneficiary of a free gift, nestled somewhere within the box. Not being predisposed to the social mores of cereal hygiene, he dug his hand into the bottom of the box and fished out his free toy: A tiny blue whistle.

Not having a pressing social-calendar, Mr Draper, a grown man, entertained himself with his new toy. He was fascinated by the extremely high pitch the whistle was producing. It wasn't quite high enough to attract the neighbourhood's dogs, but it did have other potential applications: its 2600Hz tone was quite similar to the new sounds occasionally heard following the pressing of the newly released touch-tone telephones being introduced across the US.

With a bit of playing around he could initiate a telephone call that bypassed the local exchange and directly accessed the international trunk-lines belonging to AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph). He could dial local numbers, then by pitching his whistle, connecting to the next set of trunk lines. In time, with two local phone lines in his home, he could route his outbound call from the US to London, then connect to the British Telecom trunk Lines to Hong Kong, then on to Moscow, then back to the US, where his own phone would ring. Mr Draper would often entertain friends with this little trick.

When he was enlisted in the Air Force and based in Alaska, Mr Draper happily arranged for all his comrades to make free telephone calls to their families in the contiguous US, through his nifty little toy. It was a crime to access the AT&T lines and to use their lines for personal gain (the calls to families, etc.), it was considered 'theft of service.' And, the fact that the lines were not limited to within the state of Alaska, but continually crossing numerous state lines, his action was a federal crime.

But Mr Draper had yet to consider this. He constructed a number of little boxes that were used to replicate his free whistle and sold them to people who were more excited about the prospect of making free calls around the world, than the fact they were participating in a cyber-fraud.

In 1972, Mr Draper was convicted of cyber-fraud. But the damage was done. His trickery had been published on multiple computer bulletin boards as a rogue programme called 'The Creeper.' Untold numbers of individuals availed themselves of this illegal, but lucrative opportunity.

So advanced did the crime become that at one point, Mr Draper was able to make an untraceable call to the White House, using the current access password 'Olympic,' to be connected through to the President of the United States -Richard Nixon. Whoever it was that answered the call sounded very much like President Nixon, according to Mr Draper and friends listening. But the call recipient became both suspicious and angry because the password was strictly assigned to reach him during a global emergency. Mr Draper's complaint was that Los Angeles had run out of toilet paper! The call recipient was furious and demanded to know who it was that had phone him!

Years on, summarising the costs to AT&T, the cost of changing all the access frequencies, re-routing of lines and transit exchanges was so vast as to be incalculable. The costs were equally immeasurable by US security agencies, and telephone companies around the world.