From the previous cyber security tutorial, we understand what is the need for cyber security and what are the threats we have to face when using cyberspace or the internet. Before going to know in-depth about cyber security, it’s very important to know where it all started and how we got here.
In this tutorial, we are going to know the history of cyber security that including how it all started and how it become such important, and what all changes have come to cyber security and cyberspace. The cyber security concept started in 1969 from a research project because of the invention of deadly viruses that are able to destroy servers or can steal user data.
The concept of cyber security was started in 1969. A professor of UCLA called “Leonard Kleinrock” and one of his students, Charley Kline’ able to send an electronic message from his computer which was the first electronic message ever sent in the world to one of the programmers called ‘Bill Duvail’ at Stanford.
After that incident, a year after that, in 1970 one of the researchers of BBN technologies named “Robert Thomas” created a computer virus [which is supposed to be the first virus] and he understand the fact that a computer program can able to travel from one computer to another, and able to make some changes to the computer it travels.
He was thrilled and made it to travel through the Tenex terminals making a display message of “I am the creeper and catch me if you can” he also named that computer virus as Creeper. The creeper started traveling and it made many Tenex terminals to display the message and that triggered the need for a program to stop such creepers.
It was “Ray Tomlinson” the inventor of the email system which we use today to see this creeper program and like it. He thinks about that and understands the hidden danger behind such programs and starts work to stop this creeper program.
He made another computer program and named it “Reaper” it is the first known antivirus that aims to find the creeper and delete the copies of the creeper.
Now you understand the story behind the trigger the formation of cyber security. That Creeper and Reaper programs were made just for fun as it doesn’t cause any problems to anyone. But as computers and networks made an immense development, criminals start to think to use the loopholes for stealing user data and even destroying a network or a computer.
When the internet and cyberspace become more and more popular then came the hackers who hack many systems and user data which is very dangerous. A German citizen hacked even many military computers and was able to access its data, even from the pentagon systems.
In 1987: the antivirus started to be used for commercial activities and available to the common man who was able to buy an antivirus for his computer.
You heard about Morris worm or Internet worm. It was a man named Robert Morris who invented a computer worm with a crooked intention to know how many computers there are on the internet. He wrote a program to know that. Morris worms can infect a system multiple times and start running in the system making it slow and destroying the system eventually.
There are millions of stories like Morris and different hackers who made different computer viruses and malware. IN the present situation even some countries are making malware and worms which are able to get the information from other countries' systems.
In the 1990s: there were drastic changes in the internet and cyberspace which make the world go online and some important issues also come with online changes.
Now we have a different range of anti-viruses and anti-malware to protect from the known viruses and worms. But we can hear the news of new viruses and worms which make us understand the need for cyber security.
