1971 a Vietnam vet named John Draper discovered that the giveaway whistle in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes perfectly reproduced a 2600 hertz tone. Draper builds a "blue box" that, when used in conjunction with the whistle and sounded into a phone receiver, allows phreaks to make free calls. Shortly thereafter, Esquire magazine publishes "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" with instructions for making a blue box, and wire fraud in the United States escalates.

1972 Abbie Hoffman helps found The Youth International Party Line newsletter.

Hoffman's publishing partner, Al Bell, changed the YIPL newsletter's name to TAP, for Technical Assistance Program.

1972 The InterNetworking Working Group is founded to govern the standards of the developing network. Vinton Cerf is the chairman and is known as a "Father of the Internet"

1973 college kids Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer, launch a home industry Homebrew Computer Club making and selling blue boxes.

1970s Susan Thunder is one of the early “phone phreakers,” part of Kevin Mitnick’s crew who brake into phone lines.

1978 First report of teen-age boys being kicked off the telephone system for pranks.

Bulletin boards - with names such as Sherwood Forest and Catch-22 - become the venue of choice for phreaks and hackers to gossip, trade tips, and share secret phone numbers computer passwords and even credit card numbers.

1982 In Milwaukee a group of six teenagers hackers calling themselves the 414's (their area code) During a nine-day spree, the gang breaks into some 60 computers,systems at institutions ranging from the Los Alamos Laboratories to Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. before being arrested

1983 Movie War Games shone a flashlight onto the hidden face of hacking

1983 Secret Service gets jurisdiction over credit card and computer fraud

1984, when a guy calling himself Lex Luthor founded the Legion of Doom. Named after a Saturday morning cartoon, the LOD had the reputation of attracting the best of the best — until one of the gang's brightest young acolytes, a kid named Phiber Optik, feuded with Legion of Doomer Erik Bloodaxe and got tossed out of the clubhouse. Phiber's friends formed a rival group, the Masters of Deception.

1984 Chaos Computer Club forms in Germany

1984 The Comprehensive Crime Control Act gives the Secret Service jurisdiction over computer fraud.

1984 The hacker magazine 2600 begins regular publication, The editor of 2600, "Emmanuel Goldstein" (whose real name is Eric Corley), takes his handle from the main character in George Orwell's 1984. Both publications provide tips for would-be hackers and phone phreaks, as well as commentary on the hacker issues of the day. Today, copies of 2600 are sold at most large retail bookstores.

1985 the online 'zine Phrack is established

1986 In the wake of an increasing number of break-ins to government and corporate computers, Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to break into computer systems. The law, however, does not cover juveniles.

1987 Decoder magazine begins in Italy.

1987 The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is created to address network security

1988 The Morris Worm Robert T. Morris, Jr., a graduate student at Cornell University and son of a chief scientist at a division of the National Security Agency, launches a self-replicating worm on the government's ARPAnet (precursor to the Internet) to test its effect on UNIX systems. The worm gets out of hand and spreads to some 6000 networked computers, clogging government and university systems. Morris is dismissed from Cornell, sentenced to three years' probation, and fined $10,000.

1988 Kevin Mitnick secretly monitors the e-mail of MCI and Digital Equpiment security officials Kevin Mitnick is charged with violating computer network of Digital Equipment Corp, he was nabbed and sentenced to a year in jail.

Kevin Poulsen — was indicted on phone-tampering charges. Kevin went on the lam and avoided the long arm of the law for 17 months.

1988 First National Bank of Chicago is the victim of $70-million computer heist

1989 The Germans and the KGB In the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines, hackers in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are arrested for breaking into U.S. government and corporate computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. Three of them are turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is publicized. Because the information stolen is not classified, the hackers are fined and sentenced to probation. In a separate incident,

1989 a hacker is arrested who calls himself The Mentor. He publishes a now-famous treatise that comes to be known as the Hacker's Manifesto.

1989 Fry Guy is raided by law enforcement; sweep occurs for Legion of Doom hackers

1990 Law enforcement starts national crackdown on hackers because of AT&T long-distance service crash on Matin Luther King Jr. Day

1990 Operation Sundevil introduced After a prolonged sting investigation, Secret Service agents swoop down on organizers and prominent members of BBSs in 14 U.S. cities including the Legion of Doom, conducting early-morning raids and arrests. The arrests involve and are aimed at cracking down on credit-card theft and telephone and wire fraud. The result is a breakdown in the hacking community, with members informing on each other in exchange for immunity.

1990, LOD and MOD engaged in almost two years of online warfare — jamming phone lines, monitoring calls, trespassing in each other's private computers. Then the Feds cracked down. For Phiber and friends, that meant jail.

A woman who goes by the handle Natasha Grigori (Bullwinkle’s nemesis in the classic cartoon) started out in the early starts running a bulletin-board system for software pirates. Now, at age “40-plus,” she’s the founder of antichildporn.org, a group of hackers who use their skills to track kiddie-porn distributors and pass the information on to law enforcement.

1991 Rumors circulate about the "Michelangelo" virus, expected to crash computers on March 6, 1992, the artist's 517th birthday. Doomsday passes without incident.

1991 Kevin Lee Pousen is capture and indicted for stealing military documents.

1991 resulted in jail sentences for four members of the Masters of Deception. Phiber Optik spent a year in federal prison.

1992 Release of the movie "Sneakers," in which security experts are blackmailed into stealing a universal decoder for encryption systems.

1992 Hackers break into GAFB, NASA and KARI

1993 During radio station call-in contests, hacker-fugitive Kevin Poulsen and two friends rig the stations' phone systems to let only their calls through, and "win" two Porsches, vacation trips, and $20,000. Poulsen, already wanted for breaking into phone- company systems, serves five years in prison for computer and wire fraud.

1993 Texas A&M professor receives death threats because a hacker got onto his computer and sent 20,000 racist e-mails

1993 The first Def Con hacking conference takes place in Las Vegas. The conference is meant to be a one-time party to say good-bye to BBSs (now replaced by the Web), but the gathering is so popular it becomes an annual event.

summer of 1994 Russian crackers siphon $10 million from Citibank and transfer the money to bank accounts around the world. Vladimir Levin, the 30-year-old ringleader, uses his work laptop after hours to transfer the funds to accounts in Finland and Israel. Levin stands trial in the United States and is sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recover all but $400,000 of the stolen money.

1994 Hackers take to the new venue quickly, moving all their how-to information and hacking programs from the old BBSs to new hacker Web sites.

February 1995 Kevin Mitnick was arrested again. This time the FBI accused him of stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. Kevin Mitnick is incarcerated on charges of "wire fraud and illegal possession of computer files stolen from such companies as Motorola and Sun Microsystems" He's kept in prison for four years without a trial

1995 The movies "The Net" and "Hackers" are released.

1995 Defense Department computers sustained 250,000 attacks by hackers

1995 Hackers deface federal web sites

1996 Kevin Poulsen is released and starts a career as a freelance journalist covering computer crime.

1996 Hackers alter Web sites of the U.S. Justice Department (August), the CIA (October), and the Air Force (December).

1996 Canadian hacker grop, Brotherhood, breaks into the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

1996 The U.S. General Accounting Office reports that hackers attempted to break into Defense Department computer files some 250,000 times in 1995 alone. About 65 percent of the attemptswere successful, according to the report.

1997 AOHell is released, a freeware application that allows a burgeoning community of unskilled script kiddies to wreak havoc on America Online. For days, hundreds of thousands of AOL users find their mailboxes flooded with multi-megabyte mail bombs and their chat rooms disrupted with spam messages.

1997 "A 15-year-old Croation youth penetrated computers at a U.S. Air Force base in Guam"

December 1997 Information Security publishes first issue.

1997 Hackers get into Microsoft's NT operating system

January 1998 Yahoo! notifies Internet users that anyone visiting its site in recent weeks might have downloaded a logic bomb and worm planted by hackers claiming a "logic bomb" will go off if Mitnick is not released from prison.

January, 1998 Anti-hacker runs during Super Bowl XXXII

1998 The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow releases its Trojan horse program, Back Orifice at Def Con. Once a user installs the Trojan horse on a machine running Windows 95 or Windows 98, the program allows unauthorized remote access of the machine.

February 1998 The Internet Software Consortium proposes the use of DNSSEC--domain-name system security extensions--to secure DNS servers.

1998 During heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, hackers touch off a string of break-ins Solar Sunrise, a series of attacks targeting unclassified Pentagon computers and steal software programs, leads to the establishment of round-the-clock, online guard duty at major military computer sites. Then-U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls it "the most organized and systematic attack" on U.S. military systems to date. An investigation points to two American teens. A 19-year-old Israeli hacker who calls himself The Analyzer (aka Ehud Tenebaum) is eventually identified as their ringleader and arrested. Tenebaum is later made chief technology officer of a computer consulting firm.

March 1998 Timothy Lloyd is indicted for planting a logic bomb on the network of Omega Engineering. The logic bomb causes millions in damage.

1998 Hackers alter The New York Times Web site, renaming it HFG (Hacking for Girls). The hackers express anger at the arrest and imprisonment of Kevin Mitnick, the subject of the book "Takedown" co-authored by Times reporter John Markoff.

1998 Two hackers are sentenced to death by a court in China for breaking into a bank computer network and stealing 260,000 yuan ($31,400).

June 1998 Information Security publishes its first annual Industry Survey, finding that nearly three-quarters of organizations suffered a security incident in the previous year.

July, 1998 Hackers break into United Nation's Children Fund Web site threathening "holocaust"

October, 1998"U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno announces National Infrastructure Protection Center"

December, 1998 L0pht testifies to the senate that it could shut down nationwide access to the Internet in less than 30 minutes.

1999 Software Security Goes Mainstream In the wake of Microsoft's Windows 98 release, 1999 becomes a banner year for security (and hacking). Hundreds of advisories and patches are released in response to newfound (and widely publicized) bugs in Windows and other commercial software products. A host of security software vendors release anti-hacking products for use on home computers.

1999 The Electronic Civil Disobedience project, an online political performance-art group, attacks the Pentagon calling it conceptual art. It said it was protesting U.S. support of the Mexican suppression of rebels in southern Mexico. Carmin Karasic, helped write FloodNet, the tool used by ECD to bombard its opponents with access requests in a symbolic, harmless version of the denial-of-service attacks that took down CNN and Yahoo.

1999 Classified computer systems at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, come under attack from a number of locations around the world, but the attacks were detected and stopped by newly developed Defense Department systems.

1999 U.S. Information Agency Web site is hacked for the second time in six months. The hacker circumvented the agency's Internet security and damaged the hard drive, leaving behind the message "Crystal, I love you" and the signature "Zyklon."

1999 Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, says Defense Department computers are under a "coordinated, organized" attack from hackers. "You can basically say we are at war," he said.

1999 President Clinton announces a $1.46 billion initiative to improve government computer security. The plan would establish a network of intrusion detection monitors for certain federal agencies and encourage the private sector to do the same.

1999 Kevin Mitnick, detained since 1995 on charges of computer fraud, signs plea agreement.

March 1999 The Melissa worm is released and quickly becomes the most costly malware outbreak to date.

April 1999 The U.S. Justice Department declines to prosecute former CIA Director John Deutch for keeping 31 secret files on his home computer after he left office in 1996.

1999 President Clinton announces he has set aside $1.46 billion for a plan to improve government computer security

October 1999 American Express introduces the "Blue" smart card, the industry's first chip-based credit card.

1999 "Unidentified hackers seized control of a British military communication satellite and demanded money in return for control of the satellite

December 1999 David L. Smith pleads guilty to creating and releasing the Melissa virus. It's one of the first times a person is prosecuted for writing a virus.

“St.” Jude Milhon (her real name), a 36-year-old woman in Berkeley, Calif., helpes found Mondo 2000, a major late-’90s tech-lifestyle magazine.

January 2000 A Russian hacker attempts to extort $100,000 from online music retailer CD Universe, threatening to expose thousands of customers' credit card numbers. Posting them on a website after the attempt to extort money from the company failed

second week of February 2000 Canadian hacker MafiaBoy In the first and one of the biggest denial-of-service attacks to date, launches successful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack taking down several high-profile Web sites, including Amazon, CNN and Yahoo!

2000 Activists in Pakistan and the Middle East deface Web sites belonging to the Indian and Israeli governments to protest oppression in Kashmir and Palestine.

2000 Hackers break into Microsoft's corporate network and access source code for the latest versions of Windows and Office.

2000 The following sites were attacked by hackers using ditributed denial of service Yahoo, eBay, CNN.com, Amazon.com, Buy.com, ZDNet, E*Tre, and Datek

March 2000 President Clinton says he doesn't use e-mail to communicate with his daughter, Chelsea, at college because he doesn't think the medium is secure.

May 2000, a new virus appeared that spread rapidly around the globe. The "I Love You" virus infected image and sound files and spread quickly by causing copies of itself to be sent to all individuals in an address book.

2001 Microsoft becomes the prominent victim of a new type of hack that attacks the domain name server. In these denial-of-service attacks, the DNS paths that take users to Microsoft's Web sites are corrupted. The hack is detected within a few hours, but prevents millions of users from reaching Microsoft Web pages for two days.

April 2000 The Department of Justice unveils a portal that notes the government's position on Internet security and privacy issues, tracks prosecution of cybercriminals and provides guidelines for cybercrime investigations.

May 2000 The LoveLetter virus sweeps across the globe in hours, wreaking havoc on networks and causing millions in damage and lost productivity.

June 2000 President Clinton signs the "Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce" (E-Sign) into law, making digital signatures legally binding.

June 2000 The Honeynet Project, led by Lance Spitzner, launches, collecting hacking intelligence through a network of decoy servers.

July 2000 The SANS Institute releases its first "Top 10 Vulnerabilities" list, denoting the most prevalent problems exploited by hackers. Jennifer Grannick is an in-demand lawyer who explains hackers’ rights to them at conventions.

A 19-year-old Midwestern law student who calls herself ViXen900 is a member of the HNC hackers’ group and advises them on legal issues.

2000 Kevin Mitnick is released from prison

February 2001 A Dutch hacker releases the Anna Kournikova virus, initiating a wave of viruses that tempts users to open the infected attachment by promising a sexy picture of the Russian tennis star.

March 2001 FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen is charged with using his computer skills and FBI access to spy for the Russians.

March 2001 The L10n worm is discovered in the wild attacking older versions of BIND DNS.

April 2001 FBI agents trick two Russian hackers into coming to the U.S. and revealing how they were cracking U.S. banks.

May 2001 Spurred by elevated Sino-American diplomatic tensions, U.S. and Chinese hackers engage in skirmishes of Web defacements that many dub "The Sixth Cyberwar."

May 2001 Hackers begin using "pulsing" zombies, a new DDoS method that has zombie machines send random pings to targets rather than flooding them, making it hard to stop attacks.

May 2001 AV experts identify Sadmind, a new cross-platform worm that uses compromised Sun Solaris boxes to attack Windows NT servers.

July 2001 Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov is arrested at the annual Def Con hacker convention. He is the first person criminally charged with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

August 2001 Code Red, the first polymorphic worm, infects tens of thousands of machines.

September 2001 The World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks spark lawmakers to pass a barrage of anti terrorism laws many of whitch group Hackers as terorrists. and remove many long standing personal freedoms in the name of safty.

September 2001 Nimda, a new memory-only worm, wreaks havoc on the Internet, quickly eclipsing Code Red's infection rate and recovery cost.

November 2001 Microsoft and its allies vow to end "full disclosure" of security vulnerabilities by replacing it with "responsible" disclosure guidelines.

November 2001 The European Union adopts the controversial cybercrime treaty, which makes the possession and use of hacking tools illegal.

January 2002 Bill Gates decrees that Microsoft will secure its products and services, and kicks off a massive internal training and quality control campaign.

February 2002 As part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft shuts down all Windows development, sending more than 8,000 programmers to security training.

April 2002 The U.S. Army initiates the "Mannheim Project," an effort to better consolidate and secure the military's IT assets from cyberwarfare.

May 2002 Klez.H, a variant of the worm discovered in November 2001, becomes the biggest malware outbreak in terms of machines infected, but causes little monetary damage.

June 2002 The Bush administration files a bill to create the Department of Homeland Security, which, among other things, will be responsible for protecting the nation's critical IT infrastructure.

July 2002 An Information Security survey finds that most security practitioners favor full disclosure because it helps them defend against hacker exploits and puts pressure of software vendors to improve their products.

August 2002 Researcher Chris Paget publishes "shatter attacks," detailing how Windows' unauthenticated messaging system can be used to take over a machine. The paper raises questions about how securable Windows could ever be.

September 2002 The White House's Office of Homeland Security releases a draft of the "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," which many criticize as being too weak.

October 2002 The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium--(ISC)2--confers its 10,000th CISSP certification.

January 23, 2003 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Man Convicted of Hacking a Judge's Personal E-Mail Account

Februay 6, 2003 Former Employee of Viewsonic Arrested on Charges of Hacking into Company's Computer, Destroying Data

February 13, 2003 Ohio Man Attacked NASA Computer System Shutting Down Email Server

February 20, 2003 Ex-employee of Airport Transportation Company Arrested for Allegedly Hacking Into Computer, Destroying Data

February 26, 2003 U.S. Convicts Kazakhstan Hacker of Breaking into Bloomberg L.P.'s Computers and Attempting Extortion

February 26, 2003 Former Employee of American Eagle Outfitters Indicted on Charges of Password Trafficking and Computer Damage

February 28, 2003 Los Angeles, California Man Sentenced to Prison for Role in International Computer Hacking and Internet Fraud Scheme

March 10, 2003 California Woman Convicted for Unauthorized Computer Access to Customer Account Information in Credit Union Fraud Prosecution

March 13, 2003 Computer Hacker Ples Guilty to Computer Intrusion and Credit Card Fraud

March 13, 2003 St. Joseph, Missouri Man Ples Guilty in District's First Computer Hacking Conviction

March 14, 2003 Student Charged with Unauthorized Access to University of Texas Computer System

April 2, 2003 San Jose, California Man Indicted for Theft of Tre Secrets and Computer Fraud

April 18, 2003 Ex-employee of Airport Transportation Company Guilty of Hacking into Company's Computer

May 12, 2003 Three Californians Indicted in Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud and Identity Theft

June 12, 2003 Computer Hacker Sentenced to One Year and One Day And Oredered to Pay More than $88,000 Restitution For Series of Computer Intrusions and Credit Card Fraud

June 12, 2003 Southern California Man Who Hijacked Al Jazeera Website Agrees to Ple Guilty to Federal Charges

July 1, 2003 Kazakhstan Hacker Sentenced to Four Years Prison for Breaking into Bloomberg Systems and Attempting Extortion

July 11, 2003 Queens, New York Man Ples to Federal Charges of Computer Damage, Access Device Fraud and Software Piracy

July 17, 2003 FBI Employee Arrested and Charged in Three Federal Indictments

July 25, 2003 Russian Man Sentenced for Hacking into Computers in the United States

August 25, 2003 Former Computer Technician in Douglasville, Georgia Arrested for Hacking into Government Computer Systems in Southern California

August 29, 2003 Minneapolis, Minnesota 18 year old Arrested for Developing and Releasing B Variant of Blaster Computer Worm

September 9, 2003 U.S. Charges Hacker with Illegally Accessing New York Times Computer Network

September 10, 2003 Deputy Assistant Attorney General John G. Malcolm's Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census

September 26, 2003 Juvenile Arrested for Releasing Variant of Blaster Computer Worm That Attacked Microsoft

September 29, 2003 President of San Diego Computer Security Company Indicted in Conspiracy to Gain Unauthorized Access into Government Computers

October 6, 2003 Former Employee of Viewsonic Ples Guilty to Hacking into Company's Computer, Destroying Data

October 7, 2003 Disgruntled Philelphia Phillies Fan Charged with Hacking into Computers Triggering Spam E-mail Attacks

November 5, 2003 Dallas, Texas FBI Employee Indicted for Public Corruption

November 20, 2003 Three Men Indicted for Hacking into Lowe's Companies' Computers with Intent to Steal Credit Card Information

November 20, 2003 Two Alleged Computer Hackers Charged in Los Angeles as Part of Nationwide 'Operation Cyber Sweep'

December 5, 2003 Former Hellmann Logistics Computer Programmer Sentenced for Unauthorized Computer Intrusion

December 18, 2003 Milford Man Ples Guilty to Hacking