Speakers
Synopsis
Data breaches, ransomware attacks and cyber-attacks dominate the headlines. However, in many instances the underlying motivation, approaches and techniques used are not new and have been around since long before ecommerce, the internet, computers, and even electronic communication.
In 1834 twin brothers Joseph and François Blanc, entrepreneurs from Bordeaux, France would frequently speculate on the Bordeaux Stock Exchange. To increase their profits, they devised an elaborate scheme to reduce the time taken for news of price changes at the Paris stock exchange to reach them in Bordeaux. Instead of waiting the three days for price updates to arrive via post, they exploited the semaphore-based telegraph system used to communicate between major cities in France. With the news of stock prices in Paris in their hands before anyone else in Bordeaux, they had the ability to use this information to make vast amounts of money.
Based on research from news archives, and archival material from the police investigation and court proceedings, this talk will explore how this hack was accomplished, how it was discovered, what the outcome was and what we can learn today from an audacious hacking event that took place in the early 1800s.
