THE CLOAK-AND-DAGGER scenarios that swirl in the imagination when you hear of cyberattacks feel like new-world problems. But the first documented wireless hack occurred in 1903. Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor and electrical engineer, was demonstrating his new wireless system, which he claimed could securely send messages over a long distance. To exhibit, Marconi planned to send a wireless message to a colleague who was giving a lecture 300 miles away at the Royal Institution in London. While the lecture was wrapping up, the wireless receiver sparked to life, and it appeared that Marconi's claim was true. Upon closer inspection, the Morse-code printer repeatedly printed out the word "Rats" followed by a limerick: "There was a young man from Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily." Marconi's secure system had been hacked.
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