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Was This the First Denial of Service Attack?

Posted by timothy on from the read-the-disclaimer-about-calling-first dept.

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."

1 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Was it a DoS exactly? by Wyzard · · Score: 0, Redundant

    DoS is any attack that deliberately prevents people from being able to use the system, without actually damaging the system. Flooding the system with service requests is just one way of doing that. Sending commands to hang everyone's terminal is another.