Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started his hacking career

The word "hacker" is now perceived not as much as before: meaning people involved in illegal activities using the computer "hackers". If you delve into historyIn 1960 a hacker named programming specialist.

These two concepts, of course, related. Hackers in both senses - are experts in their field who understand the intricacies of the PC. However, there is an obvious and important difference. Innocent meaning of the word "hacker" in the minds of people slowly but firmly tied to illegal activities is not just. Once people whose names are in the modern high-tech industry are heavy, tarnished meaning of the word "hacker" by their actions.

The exhibition at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (CA) presented a device called Blue Box. This thing was invented by two very experienced hacker - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. You may have heard about these guys. :) About where they brought, we'll talk.

Blue Box - the invention of two Steve gizmos discharge for hacking the phone - phreaking (phreaking, from the merger of two English words: phone and freak). Very much I wanted them free to communicate by telephone.

The telephone system includes a series of interconnected telephone exchanges. When you dial the number of the person with whom you want to talk, each telephone exchange in your direction should be to establish a connection to carry out the connection between subscribers. When phones first came out, the communication is carried out human operators, as well as technologies were introduced exchanges, and human operator was no longer necessary.

These automatic telephone stations must communicate with each other in order to send your call to the destination. This process is known as "flagging." It was opened in the US in the area of ​​the 1960s and 1970s and was carried out through a series of beeps.

These sounds were the Achilles' heel: the hackers quickly found her.

Blue Box has been developed to simulate the in-band audible signals used telephone exchanges. These signals are played through the speaker connected to the microphone of the handset, was introduced into misleading automatic telephone exchanges: they sincerely believed that they receive legal signal information. As soon as all the alarm codes have become known and understood, for hackers has become possible.

The bravest were quick to capitalize on this. Of course, we are talking about Jobs and Wozniak, developed in the early 1970s and began to sell illegally their Blue Box, becoming the phone phreakers.

When the rich and famous are breaking the law, many often attempt to justify them, and to find a motive. If we talk about Steve, you can refer to some videos and interviews that are given to describe this period in their lives. They can clearly see that they strained at first about the technical side of the problem, but soon realized that they could capitalize on this good money.

Eventually, they gave up the criminal way, after they nearly caught in the act, and, of course, by that time they already had a new motivation inspired by technological progress. Steve Jobs later claimed that there would be no Apple's, if he and Wozniak did not experiment with the Blue Box.

With this branch hacking was done, when phone companies come to their senses and began to work with out-band signaling, wherein the communication for separate specialized steel used connection.

Since then "call" Wozniak and Jobs? Experienced programmers? Yes. Are they deliberately engaged in illegal activities? Yes. Can we call them hackers now? Unlikely. They're famous for is not because of it.

However, if not for this invention, it is possible, Steve would not have learned a lot, and it would not lead their contribution to the Apple technology that we use today and their phones tablets. Are there modern hackers are on the brink of a crime and the arts? And suddenly be put in jail hacker-genius like Steve Jobs?

All very concerning ...