Bill Gates Used To Be A Hacker

BILL GATES USED TO BE A HACKER!!!! Yes you heard that right!!
(Sarcasm/humor)
Some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs of our time are reformed hackers.
Bill Gates, now 60, was a reformed hacker.
Today Gates sits atop the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires - the richest people on the planet - and
he is one of the biggest philanthropists in the world.
The term 'hacker' is thrown around loosely in the media and by IT professionals. There are all sorts of
hackers ranging from teenagers who may be too curious for their own good, to thrill seekers who brag
about their exploits in the dark web, to ransom ware authors out purely for the money, to members of
organized cybercrime gangs, to cybercriminals sponsored by hostile nation states.
Bill Gates was a young hacker, who pushed the limits, got caught, paid his price and learned from it,
then went on to startup the iconic Microsoft Corporation.
Before we get into the details of how Bill got into hacking. Please subscribe to our channel for more
details
Lets move on to the more interesting part now(humorous)
The term “attack surface” has entered the vocabulary of savvy company executives, with the log4j
vulnerability being just the most recent crack to be exploited by hackers. Well our dear old bill who was
just a teenager back then(sarcastic/humorous) breached a vulnerable attack surface half a century ago.
One day he started playing around with the computer’s security systems. On time-sharing computer
systems, like the DEC TOPS-10 system that Gates now knew well, many users shared the same machine
and used it simultaneously, via a terminal connected to a mainframe or minicomputer that was often
kept in a locked room. Safeguards had to be built into the systems to prevent one user from invading
another user’s data files or crashing a user program, or worse yet, crashing the operating system and
bringing the whole computer system to a halt.
Gates taught himself how to invade this DEC TOPS-10 system and then other systems. He became an
expert in the underground art of subverting computer-system security. His baby face and bubbly
manner masked a very clever and determined young hacker. Soon he could brag that he was able, by
typing just 14 characters on a terminal, to bring the whole TOPS-10 system to its knees.
After learning how easily he could crash the DEC operating system, Gates cast about for bigger
challenges. The DEC system had no human operator and could be breached without anyone noticing and
sounding an alarm. On some other systems, human operators continually monitored activity.
Control Data Corporation had a nationwide network of computers called Cybernet, which CDC claimed
was completely reliable at all times. For Gates, that claim amounted to a dare.
Gates got cocky. To a high school kid, this after-school job of troubleshooting a big computer was
exhilarating. The sense of power he got from controlling those giant computers exhilarated him. It gave
him a sense of power. He was eager to see what else he could do.
A CDC computer at the University of Washington had connections to Cybernet. Gates set to work
studying the CDC machines and software; he studied the specifications for the network as though he
were cramming for a final exam
Gates got access to one of those peripheral processors and set about insinuating himself into the CDC
hive dressed as a worker bee. The mainframe operator observed the activity of the peripheral processor
that Gates was controlling, but only in the form of messages sent to the operator’s terminal. Gates
worked out how to gain control of all the messages the peripheral processor sent out. He schemed to
trick the operator by maintaining a veneer of normalcy while he cracked the system wide open.
The scheme worked.
From his outpost of a peripheral processor, Gates electronically insinuated himself into the main
computer, bypassed the human operator without arousing suspicion, and planted the same “special”
program in all the component computers of the system. And set them running. It was a spectacular
success: he caused all the computers to crash simultaneously.
Gates was amused by his exploits, but CDC was not, and he hadn’t covered his tracks as well as he
thought. CDC caught him and sternly reprimanded him. Chastened and humiliated, he swore off
computers for more than a year.
I swore off computers for about a year and a half — the end of the ninth grade and all of the tenth. I
tried to be normal, the best I could. — Bill Gates
But hacking was the high art of the technological subculture; all the best talent was hacking. When,
later, Gates wanted to establish his credentials, he didn’t display some clever program he had written.
He just said, “I crashed the CDC,” and everyone knew he was hot stuff. He was a hacker.
Years later in 2002, a more mature Gates - chief at Microsoft at the time - wrote his famous email on
trustworthy computing. His message was about protecting and defending Microsoft's intellectual
property - namely its software code - and securing the electronic information belonging to their
customers.

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BILL GATES USED TO BE A HACKER!!!! Yes you heard that right!!

Bill Gates, now 60, was a reformed hacker.

Lets move on to the more interesting part now(humorous)

The scheme worked.

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