The 1991 book Cyberpunk, by journalists Katie Hafner and John Markoff, mentions that hacker culture got its start in the 1970s with the "phreaks," a small group of people who used a whistle from a cereal box to bypass the phone company's billing system and make free long distance calls.
一九九一年記者馬可夫和海芙納共同出了一本名為《電腦叛客》的書，書中談到駭客文化源自一九七○年代美國的「電話盜打」，當時有一小群人利用電話的撥號音調繞過電話公司的計費系統，好打免費電話。