Lessons from France's first cyber-attack, nearly two centuries ago | Hacker News Reader

Lessons from France's first cyber-attack, nearly two centuries ago

1843magazine.com

145 pointsForHackernews21 comments

Obligatory Terry Pratchett Clacks reference here :) this was a great article on how real life got into a story which got into a real life situation again..

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/short...

http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Clacks

"Cyber-attack" seems like the wrong term in this case. They weren't trying to attack or damage anything.

I agree. As well, these things were called semaphores rather than mechanical telegraphs.

Furthermore, the British Navy sent many cannonballs in their direction during the Napoleonic Wars, which were long before 1834. That might count as a cyber-attack.

They were attacking the market in a sense as it relied on latency of information to determine prices. Certainly I'd dub these gentlemen posthumously as hackers, maybe they were the first.

Agree. Sounds like "piggybacking."

Yes, that does seem like the wrong term. Maybe "network hack"?

Phreaking.

Plus considering there was a manuscript on cryptanalysis written as early as 800AD (IIRC), it can hardly be considered the first. Additionally, I'd consider cryptanalysis (ie, decoding messages not intended for you) more of an "attack" than this nonsense.

I'm sure there were a million other "interfering with communication" instances throughout history,why they picked this particular one is totally baffling to me.

This was also taken up in a few of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels to some great comic effect.

http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Clacks

The Smoking Gnu! Pratchett was genuinely interested CS and crammed an unusually high amount of modern tech references into his books. The imp-powered PDA devices from Jingo still bring tears to my eyes.

Bingley bongley beep!

Reminds me a similar story evoked in The Count of Monte Cristo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo#Summ...

Yeah that was classic Man-in-the-Middle attack.

This seems more like a "hack" in the general tech sense than the security sense (even though it's probably technically illegal). I even think it'd be something YC would love to see on an application.

> (even though it's probably technically illegal)

The article mentions that they weren't convicted for their hack because it wasn't technically illegal.

The bribing of government employees might not have been a crime then, but it is now. On the other hand, confidential contributions to help get politicians elected is back with us...

Also interesting is that 2 centuries later, we're still trying to fight latency. Now with specialized wireless lines and shorter distance fiber, then with pigeons and couriers.

Some people still use birds to send data (river rafting photographers): http://origin.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6209735

also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

That article about using actually, for real using homing pigeons as data carriers is very cool, thanks.

Also - excellent handle responding to a comment about latency.

I'm surprised the data was transmitted "live", instead of being copied down and then re-transmitted.

Cut-through[0] has always been faster than store-and-forward[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-through_switching

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_and_forward

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