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Was This the First Denial of Service Attack?

An anonymous reader writes "Way back in 1974, Dave Dennis, then aged 13, decided to try out the -ext- TUTOR command on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois, and see if he could cause all the terminals of other users to go offline. It worked. And he never got caught. Of course, the powers that be eventually caught on and fixed the -ext- command so terminals by default didn't automatically receive -ext-'s sent from other locations."

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Was it a DoS exactly? by XanC · · Score: 2, Informative

    A DoS, generally, is anything that prevents a computer (or I suppose anything) from performing its functions. It's anything that "denies" "service".

  2. Re:Earlier DoS by Jello+B. · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you were trying to get attention for being a young person on Slashdot, you didn't have to tell us how young you are. Your punctuation is enough.

  3. Re:A Possibly earlier one... and a funny story. by feijai · · Score: 5, Informative
  4. Re:So they could receive commands!? by PCM2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I dont care if its 1974 ot 1794, human nature doesnt change. Put locks on your (virtual) doors.

    Yeah, that seems like great advice now, but hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. As recently as the early 90s, most Unix systems didn't even use shadow passwords.

    Admin Guy: "Yeah, so what could happen? Some college kid is going to buy a Unix server and set it up in his dorm room so he can run a brute force attack on /etc/passwd? I'd like to see that one!" LOLZ, snort snort...

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  5. Re:403 Forbidden by scdeimos · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm sure you're attempting to be funny, but for those actually interested in reading TFA...

    http://www.networkmirror.com/VB47vkBkoAUZdJvS/www.platohistory.org/blog/2010/02/perhaps-the-first-denial-of-service-attack.html

  6. Re:Was it a DoS exactly? by weicco · · Score: 2, Informative

    Flooding is just one way/method to execute (D)DoS attack. You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack#Methods_of_attack

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