Apparently, the first known cyber attack went down in France almost 200 years ago and aimed to subvert the bond market, according to the Economists’ 1843 Magazine. The forefather of the WannaCry ransomware virus last year and the 1 bn account hack of Yahoo took place in 1834 and hit France’s national data network, the first of its kind in the world when it launched back in the 1790s. It was a mechanical telegraph system that relayed messages across a network of towers, each containing a system of wooden levers to transcribe a code for a letter or number. This would be picked up by telescope from the adjacent towers, was transcribed, then passed along. The network was reserved for government use, but two bankers, François and Joseph Blanc, devised a way to subvert it to their own ends.

The Blanc brothers wanted to tap into the network to have access to information when trading in the Bordeaux bond market. With mail taking several days to arrive from Paris and other forms of communication like carrier pigeons being unreliable, hacking the telegraph system was the most assured way for the traders to beat the market on information. “They bribed the telegraph operator in the city of Tours to introduce deliberate errors into routine government messages being sent over the network.” The scam was uncovered a full two years later, when the crooked operator fell ill and snitched to a friend. The Blancs were put on trial but weren’t convicted — there was no law at the time against misuse of a data network.