International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 58

A (Guided) Tour of the Digital Wild West
Appendices
1 - Cybercrime, the key dates
[See MalwareBytes, December 2017]
1960s
• First cases of phone hacking (Phone Phreaking)
• “Val Smith” (an alias) falsifies data on a computer and embezzles money from
his employer via false expense claims.
1970s
• (1976) Donn B. Parker publishes the book Crime by Computer.
1980s
• (1981) Ian Murphy, a.k.a. “Captain Zap”, becomes the first hacker to be sentenced
for hacking electronic billing systems at telecommunications company
AT&T.
• (1986) The US passes its Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
• (1988) Early malicious software (“Morris Worm”) infection released in the US.
Its author, Robert Tappan Morris, is the first to be sentenced under the CFAA.
1990s
• (1990) In Los Angeles, Kevin Poulsen is arrested for hacking the phone lines of
a local radio station in order to win radio phone-in prizes.
• (1994) A Russian hacker steals 10 million dollars from Citibank.
• (1996) Mathew Bevan and Richard Pryce commit the first (detected) largescale
hack of US military computers.
2000s
• (2000) The “Love Bug” virus from the Philippines infects 50 million computers
in ten days, causing 5–8 billion dollars’ worth of damage.
• (2000) First mass denial-of-service (DOS) attack launched by “Mafiaboy,”
causing eBay and Amazon to go down, at a cost of 1.7 billion dollars.
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