Early 90s for sure, likely cross-pollination from IRC but also brought into the popular vernacular via programs like AOHell (came out in 1994) and other GUI fro

Early 90s for sure, likely cross-pollination from IRC but also brought into the popular vernacular via programs like AOHell (came out in 1994) and other GUI frontends for executing a variety of shell scripts that would modify aspects of your AOL client. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOHell I think the author of the article is misidentifying the intent of the term though. Script kiddie has come to mean a person who is enabled by a tool or interface that allows them to carry out a dangerous or damaging attack on a computer system while having no knowledge about how to accomplish this attack via their own means. I think in the context of the article the "original sources" are moreso espousing a bit of a programming elitism. Similar ideas but different spirits of the word.