First on the air in 1965, the BBC program Tomorrow’s World showcased the latest in science and technology to millions across the UK. Early episodes included features on everything from electronic music, to computerized banking, to car radios. The series promoted a future that was exciting, safe, and filled with creative promise.
In 1972, host James Burke highlighted a different sort of creativity: so-called computer fraud. In the segment, Burke follows private consultant Guy Parker into an anonymous business as Parker reenacts a real swindle that he undertook a few days prior, with the company’s consent. We witness Parker make it past the front desk and begin to string together the firm’s sensitive financial information. A list of contractors, a well-placed phone call, and Parker is ready to commit his deception. He pilfers a spare account “amendment form” from an unlocked cupboard and slips it into the flow of paperwork rushing towards the punch card room and computer. He does the same with a phony bill, and ensures that the billed amount can be independently verified by a postmarked letter. Finally, Parker walks out 34,000 pounds richer.
Parker’s method is to “look respectable, walk through the front door, and play on most peoples’ trust.” Today, a social engineering attack is one that “leverages human psychology to influence a target, making them either perform and action or provide some information.” Parker’s work reveals one origin point for this strategy. From the outset, the office mainframe constituted both a technical and a social infrastructure, neither of which had existed prior. That Parker’s operation succeeded as well as it did, and across many firms with presumably different hardware and software, belies an organizational sea change that took place in the mid 20th century.
Between 1965 and 1975, the computerization of clerical work across public and private institutions reached an inflection point. Once a specialized military tool, computing technology would now be marketed for its broad and flexible applications. Firms like IBM promised that their machines would save time, money, and directly solve the “paperwork explosion” that had come to characterize modern business. This promise was well heeded. Sectors from insurance to aviation eagerly invested in mainframes and reorganized their workforces around these hulking devices. Industry magazines attested that running a computerized office was key to remaining competitive. Interviewing one happy executive, Nation’s Business wrote, “his business improved; his profit percentage rose and he had a sense of freedom he had not known in years.”
Yet this transition from paper to digital also introduced new anxieties. As punch cards and machine memory replaced paper records, human-readable formats became machine-readable instead. A secretary or accountant who once could easily catch errors noticing a stray figure or other irregularity now had to invest more time or learn new technical skills to find mistakes. If they did so at all. Tomorrow’s World, for one,suggests that upon entry of an error into a mainframe, “detection of your bogus data at this point is virtually impossible.”
A frightening possibility. Which is why Guy Parker’s primary emphasis is on new employee guidelines as he implores the viewer to protect their computer most of all: “It trusts everybody.”
