Web Application Security, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. The History of Software Security

Before delving into actual offensive and defensive security techniques, it is important to have at least some understanding of software security’s long and interesting history. A brief overview of major security events in the last one hundred years should be enough to give you an understanding of the foundational technology underlying today’s web applications. Furthermore, it will show off the ongoing relationship between the development of security mechanisms and the improvisation of forward-thinking hackers looking for opportunities to break or bypass those mechanisms.

The Origins of Hacking

In the past two decades, hackers have gained more publicity and notoriety than ever before. As a result, it’s easy for anyone without the appropriate background to assume that hacking is a concept closely tied to the internet and that most hackers emerged in the last 20 years.

But that’s only a partial truth. While the number of hackers worldwide has definitely exploded with the rise of the World Wide Web, hackers have been around since the middle of the 20th century—potentially even earlier depending on what you define as “hacking.” Many experts debate the decade that marks the true origin of modern hackers because a few significant events in the early 1900s showed significant resemblance to the hacking you see today.

For example, there were specific isolated incidents that would likely qualify as hacking in the 1910s and 1920s, most of which ...