But the Blancs’ pioneering misuse of the French network qualifies as the world’s first cyber-attack. The Blanc brothers were put on trial, though they could not be convicted because there was no law against misuse of data networks. The scam was only uncovered in 1836, when the crooked operator in Tours fell ill and revealed all to a friend, who he hoped would take his place.
But this extra character could be seen by another accomplice: a former telegraph operator who observed the telegraph tower outside Bordeaux with a telescope, and then passed on the news to the Blancs. The addition of a spurious character indicating the direction of the previous day’s market movement, followed by a backspace, meant the text of the message being sent was unaffected when it was written out for delivery at the end of the line. The telegraph’s encoding system included a “backspace” symbol that instructed the transcriber to ignore the previous character. They bribed the telegraph operator in the city of Tours to introduce deliberate errors into routine government messages being sent over the network. Some tried using messengers and carrier pigeons, but the Blanc brothers found a way to use the telegraph line instead. Accordingly, traders who could get the information more quickly could make money by anticipating these movements.
The Blanc brothers traded government bonds at the exchange in the city of Bordeaux, where information about market movements took several days to arrive from Paris by mail coach. Tom Standage has a great story of the first cyberattack against a telegraph network.
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