2007: The xkcd comic "Exploits of a Mom" was published. You might know it as the "Little Bobby Tables" comic. Ah, Mrs. Roberts - we admire your SQLi long game!

1988: The boot sector virus for the Atari ST, Screen, was discovered by Carsten Frischkorn (aka virentod). Also, the Atari ST was a model of personal computer sold between 1985 and 1993, not a gaming console like the more famous Atari 2600.

1963: While serving as US National Security Advisor to President Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy issued National Security Action Memorandum No. 252, which called for the establishment of the US National Communications System (NCS). The driver for NCS was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

2008: NextGenHacker101 taught us "How to view someones IP address and connection speed!" using a tool they called "Tracer-tee"!. Naive? Troll? You decide. Painfully hilarious.

1995: After writing the initial version of the yet-to-be-released SSH, Tatu Ylonen emailed a request to IANA for SSH to be assigned port 22, receiving approval and assignment mere hours later. Yes, people of 2025, 30 years ago that's how things got done!

1999: Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) member DilDog debuted the program Back Orifice 2000 (BO2k) at DEF CON 7. It was the successor to Back Orifice, released by cDc a year prior. DilDog proclaimed it "a remote administration tool for corporate America". 🤣🤔

2002: The Full Disclosure security mailing list was created by Len Rose. Nearly 100,000 posts later it was terminated in 2014 by then administrator John Cartwright due to legal threats. Soon after the mailing list was rebooted by Fyodor.

1982: The movie Tron was released. The story of a software engineer who tried to hack his old employer's mainframe to prove an exec stole games he developed. As you'd expect, AI software digitized and downloaded him. Eventually he escaped. And unsurprisingly became company CEO.

2011: Space Rogue broadcast the final HNNCast. And with that, the Hacker News Network came to an end. Final broadcast:

2008: Several DNS vendors released patches to mitigate an attack method discovered by Dan Kaminsky which could be used to cause DNS cache poisoning. Kaminsky had discovered the vulnerability 6 months prior and reported it to vendors privately so they could address it. RIP, Dan.

1999: ZDNET published the article "Exclusive: UK hackers have an easy life". The author and those interviewed claimed UK hackers were rarely successfully prosecuted and made comparisons between hackers in the UK and hackers in the US.

1998: Oxblood Ruffin of cDc allegedly interviewed Blondie Wong of the Hong Kong Blondes at Ted's Auto Collision Bay and Fine Dining in Toronto. Years later, cDC and Oxblood Ruffin revealed that the Hong Kong Blondes were fabricated.

2016: The TV series Cyberwar, hosted by Ben Makuch, premiered on the VICELAND channel with the episode "Who Is Anonymous?"

2001: Hacktivismo published its Hacktivismo Declaration. "Free speech is under siege at the margins of the Internet. Quite a few countries are censoring access to the Web through DNS filtering. <snip> politically incorrect information is blocked. "

1996: The movie "Independence Day" was released the day prior. In it, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly into an alien vessel in a 50-year-old space junker, then upload a computer virus in less than 5 minutes. Yessssss! Everything's compatible! . Humans - 1.Extraterrestrials - 0

2012: The team of Shi Bai, Emmanuel Thomé and Paul Zimmermann factored RSA-704 (212 decimal digits) 5 years after the RSA Factoring challenge ended (they didn't start until April 2011). That's dedication!. Interesting read (factoring isn't brute-forcing):

2003: California's data breach notification law went into effect. California became the first US state to require disclosure of breaches of personal information.

1998: AOL confirmed a leaked spreadsheet containing info of 1,300 AOL community leaders had been stolen from an employee's account. Not around then? AOL was kind of a big deal - it bought Time Warner in 1999 and was worth $200 billion before imploding.

1999: Chad Davis (who went by the "cyber-nickname" Mindphasr) defaced the home page of the US Army's website with the message "Global Hell is alive. Global Hell will not die.". Why did I write "cyber-nickname"? Because the Washington Post used that word!

2000: The Pikachu virus began spreading. It is believed to be the first virus targeting children, incorporating Pikachu from the Pokémon series. That was a generation ago. Where's the SpongeBob adware, Bluey virus, Herobrine ransomware, and Dr. Robotnik rootkit targeting kids?

2007: Live Free or Die Hard was released. Cop John McClane partners with hacker Matt Farrell to stop cyberterrorists trying to take down the US's infrastructure. Traceroute (1337!) is used to find the ringleader's location, then McClane kills him by shooting HIS OWN shoulder.