It is surprising how many people got the "true" origin of the verb "pwn" not quite right... even operators of "HaveIBeenPwned.com". They at least understood it's a typo ("O" and "P" are right next to each other on the keyboard!). But they then linked to an Inverse article, who went into a bunch of alt explanations such as it's a corruption of "pawn" (from a chess match) to "Phrack World News" (abbreviated as PWN). Neither theory explains how it was transformed into a verb. In fact, Inverse article chose to disregard the typo theory.
The true origin of the term pwn, is synonymous with own, usually used in past tense as "owned". In l33tspeak of the time, being "owned" means you were utterly controlled, dominated, and humiliated, usually because you are losing or lost in an online multiplayer game.
So how did pwn variation got created?
For that, you need to thank Warcraft, NOT World of Warcraft that came much later. The ORIGINAL Warcraft: Orcs & Humans RTS, and its mods, basically, maps, at the time.
To make a long story short, one of the map designers wrote a "losing condition" text. When you lose to the other side, you're supposed to get a message to the effect of "You've been owned!" However, he had a typo that day and the map was uploaded with the text "You've been pwned!" instead. The expression then, as we would say today, "went viral", and the rest is history.
In fact, you can still find this definition in the Urban Dictionary.
But wait, you ask, what is "HaveIBeenpwned.com"?
It is a website where you can check your email addresses to see if your information have been leaked in various hacks and data leaks before. Those information tend to surface on the Dark Web, and some gather those up and make them search accessible to let people check if they were affected by the leak.
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