Such messages employed both enhanced signals (like \u201cSir, your baggage and tartan plaid will await you at the station\u201d where \u2018tartan\u2019 stood for the name of the horse which won the derby in 1840) and more sophisticated schemes.<\/p>\n
For instance, back in the times of the optical semaphore telegraph, there was a case when a group of bankers bribed a telegrapher to let certain typos remain in the text in order to convey coded messages about trends on the stock exchange.<\/p>\n
As part of the scheme, the bankers secretly surveilled a telegraph semaphore on the Paris \u2013 Toulouse connection to get the critical information in both encrypted and completely \u2018wireless\u2019 manner. Good old days; it was that simple then.<\/p>\n
3. \u2018Hackers\u2019 vs. Police: arms race<\/h3>\n
Now, there is an abundance of stories about \u2018hackers\u2019 successfully exploiting the least probable vulnerabilities or, vice versa, about criminals who were careless and failed to get rid of their \u2018information fingerprints\u2019, and eventually got caught.<\/p>\n
With the telegraph, people had to adapt to the reality that any message could be instantly delivered over long distance. The aforementioned story of the \u2018tartan\u2019 plaid is a fascinating case, not only due to the cipher the interlocutors employed. The bookmaker did not even consider a probability of fast data transmission by the telegraph.<\/p>\n
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Quite similar to today\u2019s reality, the new tech favored both scammers and the police. One of the cases which greatly impressed the governors and motivated them to approve wide-scale use of the telegraph was a simple case of capturing a train thief.<\/p>\n
It was utterly elegant: the thief was caught at the next station along the track, as the message about him was transmitted over the telegraph. Before that, there was no way for the police or the train station administration to send a message faster than the train travelled.<\/p>\n
4. The binary code<\/h3>\n
After some to and fros, the telegraph widely employed Morse code, which was based on the use of short and long signals (dots and dashes) for encoding letters and numbers. In essence, they were the \u2018ones\u2019 and \u2018zeros\u2019 of those times.<\/p>\n
However, Morse code was not based on the binary system and did not survive the migration from analog to digital communications. Still, it was Morse code which founded the principles of using simple and easily distinguishable signals to encode messages.<\/p>\n
It was enough just to comprehend the properties, capabilities, and logic of the binary system in order to make it the foundation of today\u2019s computing principle.<\/p>\n
![\"telegraph-3\"](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/06\/05103823\/telegraph-3.jpg\")
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5. Retention of messages<\/h3>\n
Back in the 1870s, as the government loosened its grip on encryption, the so-called \u2018commercial ciphers\u2019 emerged. In fact, they were just glossaries containing code words for conveying certain combinations, phrases, or even sentences.<\/p>\n
Such ciphers were elaborated by certain organizations or enterprises to cater to their own communication needs, and were also sold for public use. They did not guarantee any protection from a targeted breach, but helped to make messages a bit less explicit and limit their exposure to others.<\/p>\n
But since code words were often made-up or represented a random combination of letters, telegraphers often made mistakes. Back in 1887, a man sent a message to his business partner: \u2018bought all kinds of wool, 50,000 pounds\u2019 which was coded as \u2018BAY ALL KINDS QUO\u2019. The telegrapher made a mistake, unwittingly replacing one letter, and made the message read as \u2018BUY ALL KINDS QUO\u2019, which was interpreted as \u2018buy all kinds of wool, 50,000 pounds\u2019 on the other end of the wire.<\/p>\n
When that mistake was discovered, the partners had to quickly sell the surplus; the market eventually dropped and the companions lost a lot of money. In their attempts to sue the telegraph company never did they succeed. The only cost they were able to recover was the cost of the telegram itself. Trying to find the responsible party, they even took the case to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
For the purpose of checking the message for such mistakes, a checksum is used: it helps to verify whether two files match. Back in those times, telegraph companies charged extra for the service of checking whether the sent and the received message matched.<\/p>\n
The story of how the telegraph influenced modern IT infrastructure and information security<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n
The last telegraph company which employed traditional \u2018electric\u2019 infrastructure was India\u2019s BSNL; it ceased operations in 2013. The U.S.\u2019 Western Union stopped sending telegrams even before that. The telegraph gave up its role of critical communication infrastructure a very long time ago.<\/p>\n