Signals :: Topics

Famous Breaches

The intrusions that made headlines and changed the game. From the 414s to MafiaBoy, from Cuckoo's Egg to WannaCry, the events that taught the public the internet was attackable.

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Marcus Hutchins, the Kill Switch, and the Long Strange Year After

On May 12, 2017, a 23-year-old security researcher in Devon registered an obscure domain he had found inside a piece of ransomware spreading globally. The registration acted as a kill switch and ended the WannaCry outbreak before it took down the National Health Service entirely. Three months later, FBI agents arrested him in a Las Vegas hotel room. The story of what happened in between is the story of how strange the modern security industry actually is.

nullbyte :: April 17, 2026 :: 10 min read

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MafiaBoy: The Week in February 2000 a Fifteen-Year-Old Took Down the Internet

Over four days in February 2000, a fifteen-year-old in suburban Montreal knocked Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, CNN, Buy.com, Dell, and E*Trade off the internet using a botnet of hijacked university workstations. The week DDoS stopped being a theory and became a permanent feature of the public web.

Ripper :: April 15, 2026 :: 8 min read

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Operation Sundevil: The Secret Service Declares War on Hackers

May 1990. Secret Service raids across 14 American cities. 42 computers seized. 23,000 floppy disks confiscated. The government made it clear: the hacker underground was now a national security threat. But the raids created something larger than themselves. The EFF was founded in response. And hackers started organizing legally.

Ripper :: January 19, 2026 :: 7 min read

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The 414s: Teenage Hackers and the Law That Stopped Them

In 1983, a group of teenage hackers from Milwaukee broke into Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Security Pacific Bank. Kids with modems and curiosity. Their arrests directly triggered the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984. The moment hacking became a federal crime.

nullbyte :: December 28, 2025 :: 6 min read

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Clifford Stoll and the Cuckoo's Egg

A 75-cent accounting discrepancy at Lawrence Berkeley Lab led astronomer Clifford Stoll on a months-long hunt for a KGB-sponsored hacker infiltrating U.S. military networks. The resulting book became a classic.

nullbyte :: November 28, 2025 :: 5 min read

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Solar Sunrise: When the Pentagon Thought Iraq Was Hacking It

nullbyte :: November 25, 2025 :: 8 min read

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The L0pht Testimony: Seven Hackers Before Congress

In 1998, seven members of the L0pht hacker collective testified before the U.S. Senate and told them, plainly, that they could take down the entire internet in 30 minutes. Congress listened. Then did nothing.

Ripper :: November 15, 2025 :: 8 min read