That's an enjoyable article, but geez is it light on details.

The one tangible instance mentioned is the Spice Girls hack — but follow the link to discover they didn't even use pwn, but 0wned!

I tried searching a few pre-00s bbs/usenet archives but could only find a couple of gaming-related instances. [1][2]

It'd be pretty interesting to see some hacking groups usage in the 80-90s. Maybe someone with better access to archives could see some trends?

[1] https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.everquest/c/GN9tm8Esrw...

[2] https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.ultima.online...