Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey Thearon,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. Since we're winding down my tenure as host
Speaker 1: of this venerable podcast, I thought that it would be
Speaker 1: fun to kind of look at some quirky stories I
Speaker 1: haven't covered in the past, and this is one that
Speaker 1: some people refer to as the first cyber attack. Cyber
Speaker 1: attacks obviously big in the news these days. There are
Speaker 1: tons of stories surrounding them, everything from using cyber attacks
Speaker 1: to spread disinformation, to espionage to sabotage. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot we could talk about. But what if we were
Speaker 1: to talk about a nineteenth century cyber attack, a cyber
Speaker 1: attack that happens well before there was ever an internet,
Speaker 1: in fact, before there was wired telegraphs running through the
Speaker 1: region we'll be talking about. So allow me to tell
Speaker 1: you a story. And details of this story may or
Speaker 1: may not be entirely true, but we're going to go
Speaker 1: with it anyway. There are certainly some resources that point
Speaker 1: to this story being true. There are tons of blog
Speaker 1: posts and videos and stuff that talk about this, but
Speaker 1: I think most of them are pulling their information from
Speaker 1: one or two more recent sources. However, there's an article
Speaker 1: in an eighteen thirty seven edition of a French newspaper
Speaker 1: that I used for this particular episode. Now I should
Speaker 1: add I had to rely on auto translation for that article.
Speaker 1: My French at this point is non existent. But it's
Speaker 1: the story of how a pair of brothers were able
Speaker 1: to tap into a communications network and then insert information
Speaker 1: into that network in an effort to capitalize on stock
Speaker 1: market and bond information before anyone else could, or at
Speaker 1: least anyone else in their neck of the woods in France.
Speaker 1: So I want to point out a few sources that
Speaker 1: I use while playing this together, because that's going to
Speaker 1: be very helpful, especially if you want to read up
Speaker 1: on this too. So I think my starting point was
Speaker 1: Tom Standige's piece called The Crooked Timber of Humanity in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three magazine. That piece was published, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, in twenty seventeen, but Standige had
Speaker 1: written a book in nineteen ninety eight titled The Victorian
Speaker 1: Internet that certainly ties in with this. He talks about
Speaker 1: the network system we're going to chat about in this episode. Now,
Speaker 1: I have not had the chance to read Standige's book.
Speaker 1: I want to get a copy because it sounds fascinating,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure if this particular incident makes an
Speaker 1: appearance in the book because I haven't read it yet. However,
Speaker 1: Standage certainly writes about one of the key elements involved
Speaker 1: in our story within the Victorian Internet, and from the
Speaker 1: reviews i've it sounds like it's a really easy read
Speaker 1: and very informative and entertaining. So it's on my list now.
Speaker 1: Another piece I relied upon was a nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: article titled taking Stock by Gerard J. Holsman. Holsman has
Speaker 1: also written about this communications network we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about in this episode. He's got a white paper
Speaker 1: that I found that's all about this particular network, and
Speaker 1: then in this article he goes into the incident we'll
Speaker 1: be chatting about. I found that article in INC magazine.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's INC as an incorporated, not as
Speaker 1: in tattoos. And finally, thanks to a blog commenter with
Speaker 1: the handle tATu Tata, and I know I've messed that
Speaker 1: up on Schneier dot com, I can cite that eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven newspaper article. I mentioned it's in the and
Speaker 1: I apologize. My French pronunciation is worse than my understanding
Speaker 1: of French. It's been thirty years since I've studied French.
Speaker 1: But the newspaper is titled Journal des de bat Politique
Speaker 1: e leterreer. So again, I know my pronunciation's horrible. Just
Speaker 1: save it. I'm already aware. So we're going to assume
Speaker 1: this story is true, or at least mostly true. It
Speaker 1: definitely has some verifiable elements in it. One big, important
Speaker 1: verifiable element is that an eighteenth century inventor named Claude
Speaker 1: Shop came up with a clever way to transmit messages
Speaker 1: quickly over vast distances. He used signaling towers, which you know,
Speaker 1: actually has been a way to send messages for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, even before the eighteenth century. But his initial
Speaker 1: approach used two clocks and some large flipboards that had
Speaker 1: white on one side and black on the other. And
Speaker 1: the method of communication, honestly, is somewhat opaque to me.
Speaker 1: I read a very simplified explanation, but it was so
Speaker 1: simplified as to not have any sticking power on my
Speaker 1: brain cells. However, it doesn't really matter because by the
Speaker 1: time our story takes place, he had already evolved his
Speaker 1: approach to using poles that were mounted on beams, and
Speaker 1: those beams, in turn were mounted on masts that stood
Speaker 1: up on the top of signaling towers. So each mast
Speaker 1: had a beam attached at the top. The beam was
Speaker 1: attached in the center on like a pivot point, so
Speaker 1: the beam could rotate and it could hold four different positions.
Speaker 1: It could be horizontal relative to the mast, so this
Speaker 1: would be like a person standing up straight and holding
Speaker 1: their arms out straight off to either side. Or it
Speaker 1: could be vertical, so this would be if you were
Speaker 1: to hold your arms at the twelve o'clock and six
Speaker 1: o'clock positions, assuming you are familiar with anaalog clocks. And
Speaker 1: then it could also be diagonal, with either the left
Speaker 1: side higher than the right or vice versa. Now at
Speaker 1: either end of the beam that's mounted to this mast
Speaker 1: were poles, a pole on each end, and they were
Speaker 1: mounted at the ends on a pivot point. So it's
Speaker 1: like if you were holding a stick, like imagine that
Speaker 1: you're holding a stick at the end. That's kind of
Speaker 1: like what this looked like. So the poles could also
Speaker 1: be rotated into different position, and they could hold multiple
Speaker 1: positions from their respective end of the beam. The whole
Speaker 1: thing was meant to be like a human being holding
Speaker 1: semaphore flags. If you've ever seen those those signaling flags
Speaker 1: where you hold your arms out and you hold the
Speaker 1: flags up in specific positions, and that gives a particular
Speaker 1: meaning according to a shared code. So, using a control
Speaker 1: system that consisted of chains and pulleys, an operator could
Speaker 1: manipulate the device to hold one of many different positions,
Speaker 1: and then by ascribing these positions some sort of meaning.
Speaker 1: Through creating a code, Shapp was able to create a
Speaker 1: messaging system. So the towers were constructed so that through
Speaker 1: the use of a telescope, the operator could see incoming
Speaker 1: messages from the previous tower. They could then transcribe the
Speaker 1: symbols that were used in that message. Then they could
Speaker 1: send that same message further down the chain to the
Speaker 1: next tower on and so forth. Now, Shap's plan was
Speaker 1: to give only the origin and the destiny nation cities
Speaker 1: the endpoints of the communication lines the actual ability to
Speaker 1: encode and decode those messages. The operators in the middle
Speaker 1: of the line would have no idea what they were transmitting,
Speaker 1: they would just be copying what came before and then
Speaker 1: sending that same sequence of symbols along. This was to
Speaker 1: maintain message security because this communication systems was primarily used
Speaker 1: by the French government and nobody else Like the French
Speaker 1: government had exclusive use of this communication system and there
Speaker 1: would be special commands that the origin operator could use
Speaker 1: to indicate that he had made a mistake in the transcription.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you are operator number one or
Speaker 1: a number uden, you know, if you're in Paris, France,
Speaker 1: and you're transcribing a government message to be sent to well,
Speaker 1: let's say it's Bordeaux, because that's the city that will
Speaker 1: factor into our story. However, you realize that, gosh darn it,
Speaker 1: you've only gone and done put the wrong symbol in
Speaker 1: your last transmission, like you were transmitting, and you accidentally
Speaker 1: sent a message or a word that means something like
Speaker 1: cat instead of I don't know military. So then you
Speaker 1: have to use another signal, and that signal is essentially backspace,
Speaker 1: meaning that last symbol I sent you was in error. Well,
Speaker 1: the next operator in the chain is going to transmit
Speaker 1: everything you sent, including the mistake and the backspace because
Speaker 1: operator too or do if you will, is unaware of
Speaker 1: what those symbols actually mean. They're just sending along what
Speaker 1: it is that they personally have received the message errors,
Speaker 1: and all continue down the line until they finally get
Speaker 1: to their destination. There at Bordeaux. The receiving operator at
Speaker 1: the end of the line writes on the code, notes
Speaker 1: the indicators that say there's an error here, erases those errors,
Speaker 1: and decodes the message and records it down. So any
Speaker 1: errors that were sent along the line, assuming they hadn't
Speaker 1: been introduced by an intermediary tower, will get taken out. Now,
Speaker 1: it was this get taken out bit that in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four factors into our store all right. Now, Sadly,
Speaker 1: Claude Schapp would not live to see this happen. He
Speaker 1: had taken his own life back in eighteen oh five
Speaker 1: under circumstances that were never entirely clear, at least not
Speaker 1: to history, and this provided opportunity to a pair of
Speaker 1: brothers who are the heroes or perhaps anti heroes of
Speaker 1: our story. We'll talk about those brothers in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: So before the break, I mentioned we have a pair
Speaker 1: of brothers, not just brothers. They're twins, Francois and Joseph Blanc.
Speaker 1: At least according to various sources, those were their names.
Speaker 1: If you go to that eighteen thirty seven newspaper article,
Speaker 1: you get a bit more specific. I mean, at first
Speaker 1: article just as the brothers Blanc over and over and
Speaker 1: over again without telling you their first names. But eventually
Speaker 1: you get Louis, Joseph and Francois Blanc. That Louis is
Speaker 1: very important because Louis and Francois Blanc twin brothers, would
Speaker 1: indicate that the Francois Blanc in this story would go
Speaker 1: on to great fame and fortune. More on that in
Speaker 1: a bit. So, according to this newspaper article, the fact
Speaker 1: that they were twins actually made it more complicated because
Speaker 1: they're identical. They were identical twins, not fraternal twins. And
Speaker 1: I feel like we have the working for a real
Speaker 1: farcical situation going on here where there's like mistaken identities
Speaker 1: and conspiracies. Seriously, how has Wes Anderson not made a
Speaker 1: movie about this already? Anyway, the brothers Blanc were bankers
Speaker 1: in the city of Bordeaux, which sounds like a tongue twister.
Speaker 1: They were in the business of trading government bonds or
Speaker 1: speculating if you are being a little less generous, let's say. However,
Speaker 1: one problem they ran into was that they were always
Speaker 1: behind the times when it came to what was going
Speaker 1: on with the market in Paris. Because this is eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, news about the market would take days to
Speaker 1: arrive in Bordeaux would be carried aboard a male coach,
Speaker 1: and obviously male coaches had to traverse hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: to get to their destination, Like the distance between Paris
Speaker 1: and Bordeaux is more than three hundred miles, So by
Speaker 1: the time the Brothers would learn of what was going
Speaker 1: on in Paris, it would be too late for them
Speaker 1: to capitalize on that information in Bordeaux. But if they
Speaker 1: could only find out what was going on faster, if
Speaker 1: they got news before their competitors did, they could actually
Speaker 1: make money on speculation. Now, the telegraph system, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, was restricted to official government communications, so the
Speaker 1: brothers had no legal access to that system. And if
Speaker 1: they had, so would everybody else, and the playing ground
Speaker 1: would be even across the board. But the brothers came
Speaker 1: up with a clever scheme. There was a weakness in
Speaker 1: the line. So, like I said, an operator at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the communications line could indicate that they had
Speaker 1: mistakenly transmitted the wrong symbol by including a backspace message.
Speaker 1: But if mistakes happened in between the origin and the destination,
Speaker 1: they would go unchecked until they arrived at the endpoint. Now,
Speaker 1: the longer the chain of communication was, the more likely
Speaker 1: errors would confound the message, because towers along the way
Speaker 1: would just make a mistake right, not just at the
Speaker 1: beginning and endpoints, but all along the way. And since
Speaker 1: the distance between Paris and Bordeaux was, you know, three
Speaker 1: hundred miles, actually more than three hundred miles, there were
Speaker 1: risks that a message arriving at Bordeaux would just end
Speaker 1: up being gibberish by the time it got there from
Speaker 1: all the errors. So the French government deemed it necessary
Speaker 1: to have a sort of midway point established in Tour,
Speaker 1: which is roughly halfway between Paris and Bordeaux. So at Tour,
Speaker 1: another operator would be allowed to actually decode the incoming
Speaker 1: message before encoding it again and then sending it along
Speaker 1: to Bordeaux. The Tour operator would be able to correct
Speaker 1: any errors before they became too egregious. And it was
Speaker 1: this operator that the brothers Blanc targeted. Paris would have
Speaker 1: been too risky, but tour was a possibility, so they
Speaker 1: plied this operator with bribery. I like to think they
Speaker 1: included wine and cheese in the process, but actually, according
Speaker 1: to the eighteen thirty seven French news paper report, it
Speaker 1: was through money. The telegraph operations paid out very little,
Speaker 1: and the brothers were happy to supplement the operator's meager
Speaker 1: income with bribes. That, in fact, was one of the
Speaker 1: elements that investigators would point to that the co conspirators
Speaker 1: in the Blanc crime were able to accumulate wealth far
Speaker 1: beyond their legal and meager means. Yay capitalism. Also, sadly,
Speaker 1: it would be those two co conspirators that would end
Speaker 1: up getting most of the blame. We'll talk about why.
Speaker 1: But anyway, what did the brothers actually want the tour
Speaker 1: operator of this communications line to do. Well. They wanted
Speaker 1: him to insert errors on purpose into the chain of communications,
Speaker 1: and those errors would be in response to news about
Speaker 1: the French markets. And there are some variations in the story.
Speaker 1: At this point in Standage's twenty seventeen Economist article, that's
Speaker 1: the crooked timber of humanity. He doesn't actually indicate how
Speaker 1: the tour operator would get information about the Parisian stock market,
Speaker 1: just that he would pass that information down the communications
Speaker 1: line to dough in the form of purposefully inserted errors
Speaker 1: in the communication chain. But the newspaper article from eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven says that someone in Paris would actually indicate
Speaker 1: where the Parisian markets were going by sending either a
Speaker 1: pair of gloves or a pair of stockings, or sometimes
Speaker 1: a necktie by coach to the tour operator. So the
Speaker 1: package arrives at the tour operator, he opens it up,
Speaker 1: he sees, Oh, there's a pair of gloves, that means
Speaker 1: the market is doing this, or oh it's a pair
Speaker 1: of stockings, that means the market is doing that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his glove and stocking collection is growing every week. Later
Speaker 1: versions of the story were, as conveyed in various blogs
Speaker 1: and such, would say that the color of the fabric
Speaker 1: inside the package was also an indicator as to how
Speaker 1: the markets were doing. But I couldn't really glean that
Speaker 1: from the eighteen thirty seven newspaper article. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's wrong. I'm just saying my ability to read somewhat
Speaker 1: questionably translated French is a little iffy, all right. So
Speaker 1: the tour operator gets the indication of where the Parisian
Speaker 1: stock market is going, and then he inserts an error
Speaker 1: in to the official messages, indicating essentially either up or down,
Speaker 1: then includes the backspace symbol to indicate that the up
Speaker 1: or down message was transmitted an error. So the message
Speaker 1: with the inserted error would continue on down the line
Speaker 1: all the way to Bordeaux, where the brothers had hired
Speaker 1: a former tower operator to watch for incoming messages and
Speaker 1: look for the tailtale signs of up or down followed
Speaker 1: by the backspace. So this person wasn't actually working a
Speaker 1: signal tower. They were just using a telescope to look
Speaker 1: at a penultimate tower, the one that arrives before the endpoint,
Speaker 1: to see what the message says. So this co conspirator
Speaker 1: would then tell the brothers what the messages indicated, and
Speaker 1: the brothers would quickly capitalize on the situation before the
Speaker 1: rest of Bordeaux knew where the markets were headed. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at the end of the line in Bordeaux, the innocent
Speaker 1: operator there the one who's receiving the message would just
Speaker 1: decode the incoming messages and delete all the errors as
Speaker 1: indicated like do the backspaces, and that erased the evidence
Speaker 1: of the brothers crime. And for two years, the story goes,
Speaker 1: the brothers were able to get the scoop on what
Speaker 1: was going on and were able to profit from it
Speaker 1: by acting faster than their competitors. But it all came
Speaker 1: crashing down. Why well, Sandidge says that the compromised operator
Speaker 1: in Tour got sick, and in fact, the eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven article tells the same story, sick enough to be
Speaker 1: on his deathbed and he could no longer work his post.
Speaker 1: So then he confides in a friend of his and
Speaker 1: he hoped that his friend would take up that same
Speaker 1: role in the conspiracy. But his friend was the more
Speaker 1: honest sort of person, and he went to the gendarme.
Speaker 1: He went to the authorities, and ultimately the co conspirators
Speaker 1: and the Blanc brothers were arrested. Now, the co conspirators,
Speaker 1: the operators, they could actually be charged on issues with
Speaker 1: compromising the communication systems, but for the brothers it was
Speaker 1: more complicated because there was no law on the books
Speaker 1: that the brothers had actually broken This kind of crime
Speaker 1: was so new there was no law to cover. This
Speaker 1: is something we have encountered multiple times with technology. So
Speaker 1: they were released. The two brothers were released not too
Speaker 1: long after they were arrested. Now some versions of the
Speaker 1: story say they had to pay some fines, but they
Speaker 1: got to keep most of the money they made off
Speaker 1: their schemes, and so ins the tale of the first
Speaker 1: cyber attack, or what's alleged to be the first cyber attack.
Speaker 1: But I do have a couple more fun bonus details
Speaker 1: to share with this story now. First up, the Blanc brothers,
Speaker 1: according to that newspaper article, were also students of pressed
Speaker 1: to digitation or stage magic, particularly playing card magic, and
Speaker 1: they were identified also as gamblers who rarely lost. And
Speaker 1: the implication in the newspaper, if one were to read
Speaker 1: between the French lines, is that they use their stage
Speaker 1: magic skills to cheat at cards. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the two, Francois Blanc, would become known as the Magician
Speaker 1: of Hamburg when a few decades later he would establish
Speaker 1: a casino in Hamburg. But further down the line, he
Speaker 1: would play an instrumental part in the establishment of the
Speaker 1: world famous Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco, which is a
Speaker 1: totally separate story. I've been to that casino, though I
Speaker 1: didn't know about this story at the time, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a really cool story to know. When I
Speaker 1: first started researching this, I began to worry that it
Speaker 1: was an apocryphal story because all the sources I could
Speaker 1: find were after at least after nineteen ninety eight, most
Speaker 1: of them were after twenty seventeen, and none of them
Speaker 1: were citing the French newspaper articles, so they all seemed
Speaker 1: to gather it from this pair of articles from ninety
Speaker 1: nine in twenty seventeen, and I worried that maybe it
Speaker 1: was all made up seas. But eventually, when I found
Speaker 1: that French newspaper, thanks to the commenter on the blog
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier, I was able to at least
Speaker 1: see that there's some journalistic evidence that Francois Blanc Impresario,
Speaker 1: founder or co founder of the Monte Carlo Casino in
Speaker 1: Monaco once upon a time, was a hacker, or at
Speaker 1: least paid hackers to hack. Kind of cool. Hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that story, Hope you enjoyed this episode. I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
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