“[email protected]” was one of the few Project Athena Wardialing Oct. 9th usernames to use a capital letter. Oct. 9, 1994 Legend has it that multiple hacks were required to support this The hackers known as “Minor First Outdoor Call functionality. Threat” and “Mucho Maas” released ToneLoc 1.10, a Oct. 9, 1876 wardialing program for MS-DOS and Windows 95 [Aug 24]. Prev: [June 25] Next: [Jan 25] Home Banking Wardialing is the automatic Alexander Graham Bell and Oct. 9, 1980 scanning of a list of telephone Thomas A. Watson numbers, usually every number CompuServe [Sept 24] demonstrated the first two-way in a local area code, to find announced a partnership with phone call using outdoor wires, accessible modems, bulletin RadioShack [Feb 2] and the between Bell's lab on Kilby boards (BBSs), and fax United American Bank of Street in Boston and Watson at machines. the office of Walworth Knoxville in Tennessee to offer Manufacturing at 685 Main its customers online access to The name came from the Street in Cambridgeport, a their accounts. They could "WarGames" movie [June 3], distance of about two miles. receive information on their where at one point the hero runs checking accounts, use a a program to dial every Newspapers reported that the bookkeeping service, and apply telephone number in his home two men spoke "fluently and for loans. The bank charged $5 a town. Prior to that film's release, readily" for nearly 90 minutes. month, and was kind enough to the technique had been more Indeed The Advertizer printed have RadioShack TRS-80s [Aug commonly known as “hammer the entire transcript of the 3] ready to sell to people dialing” or “demon dialing”. The conversation. wanting to participate. latter name derived from the "Demon Dialer" product sold by The following year the Bell In retrospect, CompuServe chose Zoom Telephonics to repeatedly Telephone Company was its banking partner poorly since call a telephone number. Such a founded and within a decade, the firm collapsed on Feb. 14, tool was necessary back then for 150,000 people in the US owned 1983, the third largest failure in accessing busy BBSs, and was telephones. US history at that time. also quite useful for winning Another approach was tried in radio call-in competitions. 1981. Four major banks in NYC - "Serial dialing" was eventually Jerome Howard Citibank, Chase Manhattan, outlawed, but hackers got Chemical Bank, and around that minor problem by Saltzer Manufacturers Hanover - offered randomizing the order their home banking via a videotex Born: Oct. 9, 1939; software dialed numbers. system. Unfortunately, videotex Nampa, Idaho never really caught on in the US In the early 1960s, Saltzer [Oct 30], and so their services designed the first mark-up were under-subscribed as well. language, RUNOFF [Nov 6], for Chemical Bank tried again in MIT’s CTSS time-sharing OS 1983, with its Pronto service. [May 3]. He later became one of Customers paid $12 a month for the team leaders of the Multics a dial-up service, which allowed project [Nov 30]. them to maintain an electronic In the late 1970s, his Computer checkbook, and make payments Systems Research group was a to some 17,000 merchants. This key player in the development of approach suffered from the ring technologies for local area small number of PCs then in networks. homes, and the even smaller proportion of users who owned During the 1980s, he was the modems. Pronto was abandoned Hobo signs, displayed at the technical director of Project in 1989. Athena which developed the X- National Cryptologic Museum. Windows system [June 19] and The first Internet-only bank, Photo by Ryan Somma. CC BY the Kerberos [Feb 9] Security First Network Bank 2.0. authentication protocol, both (SFNB), began operating on [Oct still widely used today. He also 18] 1995. A more recent phenomenon is found time to implement the wardriving – the search for first TCP/IP stack [May 5] for wireless networks from a the IBM PC [Aug 12]. moving vehicle. Warflying (aka warstorming) is wardriving

1 from an airplane. Related every puzzle is completed, the guesses/sec. Forty years ago, activities are: warbiking, player's character receives Thompson’s password was: warwalking/warjogging, virtual cake (a Black Forest p/q2-q4! warrailing/wartraining, and gateau). wardroning. It's a famous chess move, the was first released by Queen's Pawn Opening, written Warchalking is the drawing of [Nov 3] as in the standard descriptive symbols in public places to part of a bundle of five games, advertise an open WiFi network, called "". The notation, and the beginning of many openings. It means: inspired by the much older hobo Windows-only download symbols. through Valve’s Steam service p = pawn; / = at; q2 = queen’s [Sept 12] debuted on this day. file, rank 2; - = moves to; q4 = queen’s file, rank 4; ! = good Portal was the successor to a move Am I Hot or Not? freeware game called "Narbacular Drop" (2005), Oct. 9, 2000 created by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. "Am I Hot or Not?" was a site Robin Walker, one of Valve’s that allowed its users to rate the developers, noticed the game at attractiveness of photos of DigiPen’s annual career fair. people on a scale from 1 to 10. James Hong and Jim Young came up with the idea after Young mentioned that a girl they had Ken Thompson recently met was a “perfect ten.” Cracked The site's popularity boomed, helped by an article in Wired Oct. 9 2019 magazine, and went on to have a The Queen's Pawn Opening, significant influence on the In 2014 Leah Neukirchen found chess.com 2019. designs of Facebook [Feb 4] and an old UNIX password file in a YouTube [Feb 14]. For example, source dump of BSD 3 [March 9], It seems quite a natural choice, Mark Zuckerberg [May 14] from the late 1970s. It contained based on Thompson’s started out by creating a Hot-or- the encrypted passwords of background in computer chess Not type site called FaceMash many UNIX luminaries, such as [Sept 25]. [Oct 28]. Dennis Ritchie [Sept 9], Ken Thompson [Feb 4], Brian However, "Am I Hot or Not?" Kernighan [Jan 1], Steve Bourne wasn't the first rating site; that [Jan 7], and Bill Joy [Nov 8]. was probably RateMyFace, registered in the summer of Although the passwords were 1999 by Michael Hussey. There encrypted, the encoding relied was also an AmIHot.com, on the now defunct DES-based registered in Jan. 2000 by MIT “crypt” algorithm [Jan 15]. Also, freshman Daniel Roy. the software only accepted passwords of at most 8 The popularity of a 1-10 rating characters. for people's looks can probably be traced back to the movie “10” Neukirchen decided to crack the (1979), staring Dudley Moore, passwords as a way of Julie Andrews, and Bo Derek illustrating the importance of (who was rated as an “11” or using modern, strong, “12” in the film). cryptographic techniques. As she expected, most of the passwords were easily broken, but not Ken Thompson’s. Portal Finally on this day, Nigel Oct. 9, 2007 Williams reported cracking success in a message to the Unix The game Portal consists of a Heritage Society mailing list. The series of puzzles that typically sturdiness of Thompson's chose have to be solved by having the was highlighted by the fact that player’s character teleport using Williams' dedicated cracking an "Aperture Science Handheld tool had taken over four days, Portal Device” (or portal gun)via running on a machine capable of doorways momentarily created generating 930 million between any two surfaces. If

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