1997
The website of the Government of Victoria, Australia is hacked.
1998
The AVD website in the Netherlands is hacked by “critic”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The small news aggregator Drudge Report publishes the first report on what will come to be known as the Lewinsky scandal. The event marks a turning point in the history of independent internet media.
The website of KTBZ The Buzz 107.5 FM is hacked twice, the first time by “- I-h4k4″ and the second time by “H4ck3Rs w1th 4tt1tud3″. View an archived version of the website after its first hack. View an archived version of the website after its second hack.
The website of the SIT Sweden Scala AB software company is hacked by “critic”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2000
The website of the United States Library of Congress is hacked by “LmT” and “r00tcrew”, users are prevented from accessing congressional legislation. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2001
The US Surgeon General’s office releases a report entitled, “Youth and Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General“. The report concludes that media influences play a minimal role in contributing to youth violence. The immediate impetus for the report was the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre in which fourteen students died. Read the report online.
2003
Microsoft announces that it has sold eight million Xbox video game systems to date.
2006
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights both separately file lawsuits against the National Security Agency (NSA), challenging the legality of the warrantless spying program. The two suits, ACLU v. NSA and Center for Constitutional Rights v. Bush, include a long list of plaintiffs, including defense lawyers, journalists, political activists, scholars, and a large assembly of organizations, including Greenpeace, all of which communicate regularly with the Middle East.
Google announces the acquisition of the radio advertising company dMarc Broadcasting, the developer of an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio, for US$0102 million. The company will use the acquisition to expand its AdSense program into the radio medium. Read more at the Washington Post.
2007
Jeffrey Brett Goodin becomes the first person convicted under the US Can-Spam Act. Goodin is charged with wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark, and attempted witness harassment after conducting a massive phishing campaign in which he posed as a AOL’s billing department that duped AOL users into responding with their credit card information. Though he faced a cumulative total of 101 years of prison, he will be sentenced to serve only seventy months.
The Storm Worm is first detected. Storm Worm creates a botnet by installing a Trojan Horse on computers running Windows. On August 22, it will set a record for the most e-mails sent by a botnet in one day. The worm will begin infecting thousands of computers across Europe and the US on Friday, January 19, 2007. By January 22, it will account for eight percent of all malware infections around the globe.
Vivendi Universal releases the expansion pack World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft for personal computers in Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. Visit the expansion pack’s official website. (BBFC: 12)
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