We are talking about Murat Urtembaev, the first Soviet hacker, who in 1983 carried out one of the first cyber attacks in the USSR. He modified the software of AvtoVAZ, which led to a stoppage of the assembly line for three days. As a result, the company suffered significant losses, and Urtembaev was given a suspended sentence for hooliganism.
The first Soviet hacker was Murat Urtembaev, a graduate of Moscow State University. In 1983, he hacked the software system of AvtoVAZ, as a result of which the conveyor stopped working for 3 days. And this is one of the first “cyber attacks” discovered in the Soviet Union.
It was assumed that the young specialist had great mathematical abilities, but he did not go into science and was assigned to a car factory. Programmers-programmers and technical specialists of a general profile, who maintained the system and had nothing to do with the software, were engaged in the management of automatic systems for supplying machine parts to conveyors.
The work was carried out according to the following scheme: if necessary, the programmer can make changes to the software, but he could not report his actions in writing. That is, we were able to change the system so that it could not be noticed.
It was used by programmer Urtembaev, who is engaged in computer maintenance. Using an ordinary floppy disk (pre-tested), he edited a program that controlled the supply of parts to the assembly line. In fact, Urtembaev developed a patch for the main program counter. It measures the cycle of feeding the node to the conveyor line. As a result, the rhythm of the counter went astray, and the specified part was delayed and arrived on the conveyor. Given that the process was calculated in seconds, the delay was simply unacceptable.
According to Murat’s plan, the “virus” had to be launched at a certain time. And to protect himself, the programmer took care of an alibi – he set the launch of the patch on the day of his vacation. According to Urtembaev’s calculations, he should have gone to work, discovered the malfunction, eliminated it and heroically saved the conveyor. But the plan failed as the app launched itself a few days ago…
According to Murat’s plan, the “virus” was supposed to start at a certain hour. And in order to protect himself, the programmer took care of an alibi – he scheduled the start of the patch on the day of his vacation. According to Urtembaev’s calculation, he should have gone to work, discovered the failure and eliminated it, heroically saving the conveyor. But the plan failed as the program launched itself a few days early…
When the fix activated itself, Automation seemed crazy. Parts continued to arrive regularly on the assembly line, but only at the wrong time, and the required ones did not arrive. The production cycle was broken, no one understood anything, there was real mechanical and logical confusion. Thanks to a thorough check by the best specialists of all computer equipment, no technical problems were found. But we found the wrong code. Restarting the working program did not help and the crash continued. It took about 3 days to normalize the work process. The failure of the system caused serious damage to the enterprise, as hundreds of cars did not leave the assembly line.
Murat confessed to what he had done. After studying and investigating the incident, it turned out that he was not the only one who hacked the system. There were other programmers who deliberately created failures in the pipeline, then eliminated them themselves and received bonuses, bonuses and allowances for this.
The case reached the court. But there was a failure in the punishment. According to the law, the committed actions did not fall under the category of crimes and did not involve criminal punishment. Therefore, the first hacker was convicted of hooliganism and received a probationary period of 1.5 years. Of course, Urtenbaev was fired from his position as a programmer, but he was ordered to compensate for the damage caused. He served his sentence as a locksmith on the main assembly line.
This story became known to the entire union and caused a lot of controversy about Ultenbayev’s actions. The newspaper writes that the system programmers of the Volga Automobile Plant changed the control system of the main conveyor, as a result of which the work was stopped for 3 days. While the programmers were looking for the cause of the failure, 200 cars did not come off the VAZA assembly line. The damage was estimated at several million rubles.
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