You remember a way different 90's than I do.

It was just simpler back then. There was no aslr, no hardware level protection from execution, traffic was all plaintext, switches didn't exist, or maybe they did but just nobody used them and everything on every network was just one giant collision domain, developers by and large didn't even think about securing software outside of DRM, and absolutely nobody understood the basic premise that someone on the phone may be lying to your business to get access to things they want.

The skillset that made you a 1337 h4x0r in the 90's makes you a mediocre sysadmin these days.