A History of Single-Sign On — The Vietnam war, corporate warfare, and the birth of modern web dev

[sh-aps]

Most people think of the "Log in with Google" button when mentioning SSO. It's a much older technology than people realize — originally birthed by the NSA to fight communication hijacking during the Vietnam war. It later became a core piece of the largest pre-internet network before becoming wrapped up in a corporate battleground.Let's explore the evolution of SSO through the years, starting with government communication encryption all the way to it's current iteration sparked by the birth of asynchronous JavaScript.