70s Newspaper Illustrations of Computer Crime
How did artists working for newspapers in the 1970s view computer crime? How did they depict it? This blog goes year by year with a selection of images from newspaper archives.
realhackhistory
Chronicling the history of the computer underground, hackers, crackers, phone phreaks and the high-tech low life of the past.
Latest posts
Siberian Network Brigade & the Second Chechen War
This blog is about the Siberian Network Brigade, a Russian hacktivist group that formed for political and nationalist reasons in response to the Second Chechen War.
10 More Hacker Movies You Have Missed
Everyone loved the first one of these, so a follow up was inevitable. This time around it is a very 1990s heavy affair, with 1995 being the real opening of the floodgates for movies about hackers or techno-thrillers where hacking plays an important part in the movie plot.
History of Hacktivism in China – 1998 Indonesia Riots (Chinese Patriotic Cyberwars)
It took three months for photos, news and accounts of the violence committed against ethnic Chinese Indonesians to reach the Chinese internet of 1998. When the nascent hacker scene in China became aware of what had transpired it transformed the hacking scene there and set into motion what became the first of "six cyber wars".
Top 10 Hacker Movies You’ve Missed
I'm going to list and rank ten movies that feature hackers as major characters or hacking itself as a major plot point and discuss what makes them good or bad. I am purposefully not including WarGames, Sneakers, Hackers or Swordfish, all movies that have existing rabid fans and detractors in the hacking scene.
India, Pakistan & Hacktivism – Past, Present & Future (Part One – Early Years)
The "cyberwar" between Pakistani and Indian hacktivists and hackers is, I am certain, the longest running online conflict of its kind. The online hostilities between the two nations have been simmering away in some form or other since at least 1998, right through to the present day.
How To FOIA, With An Example From Hacking History
FOIA is a very hot topic at the time of writing, given political events in the United States. I thought it was time I wrote a user friendly guide explaining the basics of how to file FOIA requests with U.S. agencies, with an example from the history of hacking and the FBI as the government […]
First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
People say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did. To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained […]
Muddled History of the Digital Underground: Why realhackhistory Exists
This particular blog entry is about why, during the midst of the pandemic, I decided to devote many hours to trying to place the past of the "dark side" of hacking in historical context.
80’s Hackers, in Their Own Words
I've clipped interviews with hackers from the 1980's from longer TV news segments, you can find the longer segments linked below as well. We are talking about primary sources here, hackers in the 1980's talking about hacking, filmed at the time.