The Dawn of Man

Looking back across several millennia we see primitive man. He's begun to fashion tools from stone and wood, he can control fire, and by crudely smearing wildebeest blood on a boulder and sitting behind it he becomes an early webmaster. Shown here is a depiction of such a prehistoric man, awaiting visitors to log on for an exchange of primitive grunts and hand gestures. But watch out, early webmaster! Behind you is early hacker! Early hackers would pummel early webmasters unsuspectingly on the head, severely reducing the exchange of grunts and hand gestures to mere babble. Much information was lost this way, and as hackers evolved, not only did their brow become less sloped, but they discovered the ability to hack into primitive banks, making off with hundreds of sand dollars and sea shells in a swift and stealthy act. The helmet was the first preventionary device against cyber-crime.

Online With the Pharaohs

In recent decades we've discovered early manifestations of the World Wide Web etched on the walls of the tombs of the pharaohs. Shown here is an example of a child of Osiris wreaking havoc on a dot-com cartouche. The Egyptians inscribed these mysterious strings of pictographic characters on nearby obelisks and walls for anyone roaming the avenues to see. Dot-net and dot-org cartouches were also present, albeit very rare. Anubis, our jackal headed friend depicted here, prowled the avenues at night, mixing up the letters by exchanging the bird-ish thing for the sideways U or the square spiral thingy, for example. Horrified Egyptian webmasters would stumble upon the messes in the mornings, after Anubis had moved on other targets around the country. Dot com cartouches were indecipherable and functioned improperly when this hacker was through, and Anubis gained fame by tackling the cartouches of the pharaohs amid tight security. The kings of Egypt guarded their sites with vertical wall of fire and statues of Proxy, the fifth sun of Horus, but Anubis and his cohorts were ever persistent.

World Wide West

Flash forward to the Americas: mid to late nineteenth century. The gold rush had folks streaming west like a flood, and despite their great numbers, they spread sparsely across the vast land. In order to keep track of where everyone was, law men established a system of numbers as a protocol for keeping tabs on settlers and miners. Covered wagons were brandished with these numbers as shown in this depiction. All was well, but settlers invading the sites of the natives made for some hot tempers. Bands of roving natives modeled weapons after the one and the zero (namely the bow and the arrow) with which they loosed their fury. While cowboys on horseback innocently surfing between wagons were typically safe, the wagons themselves became targeted. Wagons that sold a product or service were primary targets, but educational wagons and ones representing nonprofit organizations had their share of trouble as well. As the tribes of hackers grew more advanced they developed ways of sneaking into active wagons, rearranging the furniture, and leaving undetected. Much to the dismay of the webmasters who piloted the wagons across the dusty superhighways of the barren deserts, security was always a few steps behind. A wagon could be upgraded on Monday, thought to be impervious to attack, and then attacked by a new method on Tuesday. The hackers were relentless and terrorized the network of ranchers and settlers.

The Modern Hacker

Say hello to today's wannabe hacker. True, hackers exist today as intelligent men and women with a firm grasp on how to manipulate a global system, but we're not talking about those kinds of hackers. Those guys break into government and bank sites and throw money or information around. Today's wannabe hacker looks like our depiction here. Generally young, maybe in their early teens, these pimply faced children take a break from their Babylon Five chat rooms to research weak points in commonly used forum freeware such as the code we use here on the Syndicate. They then proceed to upload a little calling card and prevent the forums from working, making it look as if they're doing some real hacking but really just exploiting a loophole. Never actually cracking server security, they return to their fantasy world with the delusion that they're true hackers. They continue being ridiculed by their peers with real lives despite their delusions, and it's anyone's guess how long they'll remain pretend-hacking sites that are small and don't even make any money. Well, I salute you, fellas. You may be scrawny geek children with no spine, no life, and no friends less pathetic than yourselves, but you sure can cook a McDonald's hamburger well, and we all need fast food from time to time.