İngilizce 11 Theme 5/70
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Listen to the reading passage

 

                                                          TRUE HACKING STORIES

We have been aware of the cyber criminals. They steal or change the important information from the system. What they do is a crime and has serious punishments. But sometimes there is news of some hackers that catch people’s attention. And they have been doing these illegal activities since the first years of the 20th century. Here you can read some of them.

What is the message?

   Have you ever thought there were hackers before computers? In 1909, a group of upper-class men in London came together in the lecture hall of Royal Institution. They wanted to see the Guglielmo Marconi’s first sample of long distance wireless telegraph. When they started the machine up, they were shocked because it started tapping out an insulting poem about Marconi. It told how Marconi cheated public. But how could it happen? Nevil Maskelyne, who was a magician and a practical joker, learnt about the method of Marcony’s device and set up an evil plan. If Nevil hadn’t wanted to stick the knife into his lifelong rival, he wouldn’t have made this practical joke.

An unexpected sale?

   It may be difficult to imagine that hackers can destroy the images of big companies. Because these companies always attempt to protect their systems and spend big amounts of money just to programme new barriers against cyber attacks. However, in 2013, somebody hacked a big fast food company’s Twitter account. The hacker posted a message saying that the fast food chain was sold to its rival company. They also changed the display of the company and its icon. Luckily, the attack ended up without giving any harm in a short time. After about an hour they took back the account. It was quite shocking to see this had happened to such a big company.

Where is the monster?

  Sometimes cyberattacks affect the whole public. The target of the hackers was once all the roads inSan Francisco. But how? In 2014, some hackers sneaked into the electronic signs in the city. They changed the messages on the road signs. When the people driving on these roads came across the sign GODZILLA ATTACK-TURN BACK, they didn’t know what to do or where to drive. This caused lots of confusion. If the drivers hadn’t been careful enough, there would have been many accidents on that day.

  Rock&Roll till morning

Cyberattacks aren’t usually made by ordinary hackers. Most governments have Professional systems to monitor the facilities of other countries. In 2012, intelligence service of a country sent a worm to the control system of nuclear stations of its rival country. But this time, they just wanted to have a good laugh. The malware turned off the monitoring stations and made the system play rock music at maximum volume during the night. It really panicked the operators until they solved the problem. If this incident hadn’t happened, governments wouldn’t have tried to improve their cyber security.