The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering

Chapter 12. A Brief History of Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare

Because security problems are now endemic and in fact seem to be getting worse instead of better, this chapter includes a discussion of all known forms of software security problems through 2013, including, but not limited to, botnets, denial of service attacks, identify thefts, and far too many more.

Cybercrime is a “new” form of criminal activity that did not really exist prior to the development of the internet in the 1990s. There were older forms of hacking, such as using tones to gain access to long-distance telephone lines, but these did not actually steal valuable property.

In the modern world, criminals can steal financial data, drain funds from bank accounts, steal social security ...