A story of cybersecurity and privacy from 1903
The image above: British Post Office engineers inspect Marconi’s wireless telegraphy equipment, during a demonstration on Flat Holm island (Source: Cardiff Council Flat Holm Project via Wikimedia Commons)
Guglielmo Marconi developed the wireless telegraph machine and in May 1897 he transmitted the first ever message over water. He was based on Flat Holm island, close to Cardiff in South Wales, and the message “Are you ready?” was sent in Morse code to a recipient in Lavernock Point, two miles from Penarth, which is also in South Wales. /a
Marconi continued demonstrating his wireless technology, claiming that messages were private and “no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages” /b. In 1903 he was demonstrating it to the Royal Academy of Sciences. He was on a cliff top in Cornwall and was about to send a message the 300 miles to London when the recipient machine started tapping out the word RATS several times before sending a rude limerick about Marconi himself, which started “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily,” and was followed by several rude Shakespearean insults. Marconi’s message then arrived.
The audience was unaware of the hack, but the London recipient, Ambrose Fleming, was furious and could not keep quiet about it. Indeed, he wrote a letter to The Times, as one did in those days, demanding that the perpetrator of this “scientific hooliganism” own up. Four days later, Nevil Maskelyne/c, a magician, also wrote to The Times, claiming responsibility for proving the technology was not as private as Marconi claimed. Wireless messages could be intercepted and altered. Not only could he do this, but all he needed was a transmitter and Morse code key, similar these days to boosting somebody’s WiFi signal so that you can use their internet next door. Maskelyne could be regarded as the first ethical hacker! It prompted further work on coding telegraph messages to encrypt them using a rotor cipher.
This is a good example of a Man-in-the-Middle cybersecurity attack just from 1903!
Diana Catton MBA – by line and other articles
References
/a Flat Holm island is now managed by the Flat Holm Project under the auspices of Cardiff Council and is a site of special scientific and environmental interest. The Flat Holm project describes the island as a living museum. If you want to find out more about the project, here is a link:
EC- Flat Holm operations.pdf (cardiff.gov.uk)
Lavernock Point is now the site of the Marconi Holiday Village, offering self-catering bungalows, club house, restaurant and outdoor swimming pool, with fantastic views over the Bristol Channel to England.
/b St James Gazette, February 1903
/c Maskelyne had been recruited by the Eastern Telegraph Company, who used wires to send their messages and were worried about Marconi’s wireless technology which could bring down their business. He was an ideal recruit because he had been working on wireless tech for his magic act but could not develop it because of patents Marconi had filed.
