It??™s dif?¬?cult to recall how life was before Web 2.0; nonetheless it
is a useful exercise, and it will prove invaluable for putting into
perspective the tools and motivations that animate today??™s bad
guys of the online world.
The Dawn of Cracking
Twelve years ago or so, Internet access was the privilege of a
few. It was the time of universities and institutions, of Usenet,
and very few companies. The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel
#Italy# had 35 concurrent users on the most crowded days. It
was the personal productivity era: Of?¬?ce, games, and computeraided
design (CAD) programs were the main reasons for having
a personal computer on the desk. Most software was distributed
via physical media, initially ?¬‚oppy disks and later CD-ROMs.
Piracy was probably the most common cybercrime at the time.
Still, it was a sluggish shadow of today??™s phenomenon, forced to
rely on expensive Bulletin Board Service (BBS), cracks passed by
word of mouth, still-expensive CD burners, and full-?¬‚edged
mail orders from a few hacker groups.
Many practices still
in use today
evolved in a lessconnected
era
It all started with
piracy
6 The Problem
Although those illicit activities didn??™t really have to do with
identity, they are of key importance because they incubated
two cornerstones of digital crime evolution: cracking and
organization.
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