Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from IHeart Radio.

Hey there and welcome to Tech Stuff.

I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

I'm an executive producer with IHeart Podcasts and how old the tech are you?

Since we're winding down my tenure as host of this venerable podcast, I thought that it would be

fun to kind of look at some quirky stories I haven't covered in the past.

And this is one that some people refer to as the first cyber attack.

Cyber attacks, obviously, big in the news these days.

There are tons of stories surrounding them, everything from using cyber attacks to spread

disinformation, to espionage, to sabotage.

So there's a lot we could talk about.

But what if we were to talk about a 19th century cyber attack?

A cyber attack that happens well before there was ever an internet.

In fact, before there was wired telegraphs running through the region we'll be talking about.

So, allow me to tell you a story.

And details of this story may or may not be entirely true, but we're going to go with it anyway.

There are certainly some resources that point to this story being true. There are tons of blog posts

and videos and stuff that talk about this,

but I think most of them are pulling their information from one or two more recent sources.

However, there's an article in an 1837 edition of a French newspaper that I used for this

particular episode. Now, I should add, I had to rely on auto translation for that article.

My French at this point is non-existent.

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