According to Wikipedia’s list of hacking incidents the first was in 1902 when a magician interrupted secure wireless communications (ie, telegraph) and replaced it with their own. This predates the Internet by… well, a lot.
Securing communications is not just an Internet problem, it’s an old problem. The enigma machine was cracked by Polish cryptologists in 1932.
People have relied on cryptography for secure communications for eons. Going back to the age of Caesar and his cryptograph, also known as a ‘shift 3’. This was considered secure because his opponents were mostly illiterate.
These days, our adversaries aren’t only literate but computer literate with massive systems on their hands to break our communications.
Which leads me to the question, what will secure communication look like in the future? Right now, we have our eggs in the cryptography basket, but all eggs in one basket is a good way to break all the eggs.
I invite anyone with a good idea for secure communications in the future to write a column or an article for DTRAP and submit it at https://dtrap.acm.org/