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Timeline of Internet conflicts

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  • 2 chapters
Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org . Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses . The length of the lines are indicative of the d
The Opte Project · CC BY 2.5

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Through Internet, Computer virus and World Wide Web

Spawned from the original ARPANET, the modern Internet, World Wide Web and other services on it, such as virtual communities (bulletin boards, forums, and Massively multiplayer online games) have grown exponentially. Such growth of population contributes to the number of conflicts and problems online growing each year. Today, billions of people in nearly all countries use various parts of the Internet. As in offline society, the virtual equivalent of major turning points, conflicts, and disruptions will occur.

Pre World Wide Web era

1980s

1980

  • ARPANET grinds to a complete halt on October 27 because of an accidentally-propagated status-message virus.

1982

  • The 414s compromise dozens of high-profile computer systems, including those at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Security Pacific National Bank, between 1982 and 1983.

1985

  • Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI on February 15. Mitnick was convicted of wire fraud and of breaking into the computer systems of Fujitsu, Motorola, Nokia, and Sun Microsystems. He served five years in prison. His pursuit and subsequent arrest made him one of the most famous hackers up to that time.

1988

  • A 23-year-old graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris, released the Internet's first worm, the Morris worm. Morris, the son of a National Security Agency (NSA) computer security expert, wrote 99 lines of code and released them as an experiment. The program began replicating and infecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated, causing machines all over the world to crash.

1990

  • In response to the US Secret Service's Operation Sundevil, Mitch Kapor establishes the Electronic Frontier Foundation to provide legal representation in cases involving the civil rights of computer users.

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