Threathistory

Every breach, worm and takedown that shaped the field, told as a case file. The same mistakes keep ending careers.

Dossiers from the Cap'n Crunch whistle to SolarWinds, each tracing how it happened and what it changed. The page to the right is being declassified; the cases are real.

// declassifyingcase fileARCHIVE

The track log

what's on file

52field reports in this track

373minutes end to end

2024–2026span of events covered

52/52reports with checked sources

Latest in this track

newest first

Sep 202613 min

When Encryption Was a Weapon: The Cypherpunks, the Crypto Wars, and the Book That Beat the Munitions List

For most of the 1990s a strong encryption program was legally a munition, and exporting it was arms trafficking. The…

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Aug 20268 min

The Fall of Dread Pirate Roberts: How One Stack Overflow Post Ended Silk Road

Ross Ulbricht built the internet's first major dark web marketplace, moved $1.2 billion in contraband, and evaded the…

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Jul 20266 min

Operation Bayonet: The Dark Web's Most Sophisticated Takedown

In 2017, law enforcement didn't just take down the two largest dark web markets - they secretly ran one of them for a…

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The full archive

52 reports // search the stacks

52 of 52 reports

01When Encryption Was a Weapon: The Cypherpunks, the Crypto Wars, and the Book That Beat the Munitions List→02The Fall of Dread Pirate Roberts: How One Stack Overflow Post Ended Silk Road→03Operation Bayonet: The Dark Web's Most Sophisticated Takedown→04OPSEC Hall of Shame: The Mistakes That Ended Careers→0550 Days of Lulz: The LulzSec Rampage, the Informant, and the Fall→06The COM: How Teenagers Became the Most Disruptive Hackers in America→07ShadowCrew: The Forum That Invented Modern Cybercrime→08Stuxnet: The First Cyberweapon That Broke Real Machines→09NotPetya: The $10 Billion Cyberweapon Disguised as Ransomware→10Colonial Pipeline: The Single Password That Shut Down East Coast Fuel Supply→11Phineas Fisher and the Hacking Team Breach: Hacktivism as Political Direct Action→12Mt. Gox to Bybit: A History of Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacks and the $10 Billion Stolen→13The Cuckoo's Egg: How a 75-Cent Accounting Error Led to a KGB Spy Hunt in 1986→14Yahoo's 3 Billion Compromised Accounts: The Breach That Changed Corporate Disclosure Law→15Tor and the Dark Web: How a Navy Research Project Became the Infrastructure of the Underground→16The RSA SecurID Breach: When Hackers Stole the Keys to 40 Million Two-Factor Tokens→17The Bangladesh Bank Heist: How Lazarus Group Stole $81 Million Through the SWIFT Network→18Ashley Madison: The Breach That Weaponized Personal Data Against 37 Million People→19The Morris Worm: How a Graduate Student's Experiment Took Down 10% of the Internet in 1988→20The Equifax Breach: How an Unpatched Server and an Expired Certificate Exposed 147 Million Americans→21The OPM Breach: How China Stole the Personnel Files of Every US Intelligence Officer→22The Target Breach: How an HVAC Contractor's Credentials Led to 40 Million Stolen Cards→23The Sony Pictures Hack: When North Korea Went to War Over a Comedy Film→24XZ Utils Backdoor: How a Two-Year Social Engineering Campaign Nearly Compromised the Linux Ecosystem→25Anonymous: From 4chan Raids to Operation Payback and the WikiLeaks War→26Operation Aurora: How China's Hack of Google Created the APT Era→27The Shadow Brokers: How the NSA's Most Dangerous Arsenal Was Stolen and Leaked→28SolarWinds SUNBURST: How Russia Hid a Backdoor in 18,000 Software Updates and Read US Government Email for Nine Months→29BreachForums and the Dark Web Data Economy: How Stolen Records Become Fraud→30Change Healthcare: How One Ransomware Attack Broke the US Healthcare Payment System→31The CrowdStrike Outage: How a Content File Took Down 8.5 Million Windows Systems in 79 Minutes→32The Hacking Team Breach: When the Surveillance Vendor Got Hacked→33The Conti Leaks: Inside the Corporate Structure of the World's Most Prolific Ransomware Gang→34Lazarus Group: How North Korea Funds Its Weapons Program with Stolen Cryptocurrency→35LockBit and Operation Cronos: How Law Enforcement Seized the World's Largest Ransomware Operation→36Cl0p and MOVEit: The Mass Exploitation Campaign That Hit 2,700 Organizations Without Deploying Ransomware→37Sandworm and the Ukraine Power Grid: The First Cyberattack to Cut the Lights→38Kevin Mitnick: The Phone Phreak Who Became the World's Most Famous Hacker→39ANOM: How the FBI Secretly Built and Operated the Encrypted Phone Network Used by 300 Criminal Syndicates→40Operation Chanology: How a Leaked Tom Cruise Video Turned a Trolling Collective Into a Global Movement→41The Stratfor Hack: Jeremy Hammond, FBI Informant Sabu, and the Entrapment Controversy→42The Cap'n Crunch Whistle and the Birth of Hacking Culture: A History of Phone Phreaking→43The $1.5 Billion Bybit Hack: How Lazarus Group Compromised a Hardware Wallet Signing Flow→44The HBGary Federal Hack: SQL Injection, Password Reuse, and 68,000 Emails→45Aaron Swartz, JSTOR, and the CFAA: When Computer Crime Law Ate Itself→46Fancy Bear, Guccifer 2.0, and the 2016 DNC Hack: Inside Russia's Election Interference Operation→47REvil: Kaseya, the FBI's Withheld Decryptor, the Russia Arrests, and the Geopolitics of Ransomware Tolerance→48Operation Onymous: 400 Tor Sites Taken Down, One Unanswered Question About How→49DNSChanger and Operation Ghost Click: The FBI Malware Takedown That Required Running Criminal Infrastructure as a Public Service→50Mafiaboy: The 15-Year-Old Who DDoSed Amazon, eBay, and CNN and Invented the Commercial DDoS Industry→51Operation Tovar: How the FBI Killed CryptoLocker, Freed 500,000 Victims, and Still Couldn't Catch the Guy→52Kevin Poulsen: The Hacker Who Rigged a Radio Contest by Taking Over the Phone Company to Win a Porsche→

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