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Lizard Squad’s Christmas Chaos: The DDoS That Took Down Gaming (2014)

Christmas morning, 2014. Kids open new Xbox Ones and PlayStations. Parents are half-awake with coffee. Millions of people try to log in. And nothing works.

Christmas morning, 2014.
Kids open new Xbox Ones and PlayStations. Parents are half-awake with coffee. Millions of people try to log in. And nothing works.

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Tony DeGonia

Tony DeGonia is a seasoned Senior Sales Engineer specializing in SIEM, SOAR, MDR/XDR, SASE, Zero Trust, and enterprise network security design. With a proven track record supporting global and public sector environments, Tony delivers technical discovery, architecture development, POCs, and executive-level presentations for mission-critical cybersecurity programs. His experience spans AT&T Cybersecurity (SLED Public Sector), IBM Security QRadar Suite, Fortra Alert Logic, and multiple emerging security startups. Tony is known for his deep technical fluency across firewall architecture, threat detection engineering, cloud networking, encryption, and multi-vendor integrations — and for helping organizations turn complex security challenges into actionable solutions.
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WannaCry (2017): The Ransomware That Moved Like a Plague

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Everything that could blink or beep was suddenly held hostage. WannaCry used EternalBlue, a Windows exploit pulled straight out of the NSA’s toolkit and dropped online by the Shadow Brokers like some chaotic “free sample.”

NotPetya (2017): The Malware That Pretended to Be a Ransom Attack… Then Destroyed Everything

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It began in Ukraine — inside a widely used tax accounting software called M.E.Doc. Attackers compromised the update server and delivered a poisoned software patch to businesses across the country.

Lizard Squad’s Christmas Chaos: The DDoS That Took Down Gaming (2014)

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Christmas morning, 2014. Kids open new Xbox Ones and PlayStations. Parents are half-awake with coffee. Millions of people try to log in. And nothing works.

Heartbleed: The Bug That Bled the Internet Dry (2014)

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In early 2014, security researchers discovered something that felt unreal — a flaw that let attackers silently siphon memory straight out of servers. Not files. Not logs. Memory. Raw, unfiltered thoughts of machines.

The Sony Pictures Hack: The Movie That Started a Cyberwar (2014)

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Employees panicked as machines shut down, phones died, and entire servers started erasing themselves. Backup drives were overwritten. Render farms collapsed. Years of unreleased scripts, HR files, payroll, emails — all dragged into digital oblivion.

The Yahoo Mega Breach: 3 Billion Accounts Exposed (2013–2014)

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Yahoo thought it was just another day in 2013. But deep inside their authentication systems, attackers were already rummaging around like they owned the place.

Target POS Breach (2013): The Christmas Heist Nobody Saw Coming

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Snow was falling. Christmas music played in every Target store. Parents were hunting for deals. Kids were begging for toys. Target’s network was buzzing with the electrical joy of capitalism.

RSA Breach (2011): The Day a Spearphish Sank a Giant

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RSA wasn’t supposed to be vulnerable. They were the company that made security tokens for militaries, governments, and Fortune 500s. Their job was to guard secrets — not lose them.

Stuxnet: The Virus That Sabotaged a Nuclear Program (2010)

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The Iranians believed their centrifuges were secure — isolated from the internet on an air-gapped network. But Stuxnet didn’t need the internet. It needed a USB stick.

The Worm That Crashed the Early Internet (1988 — The Morris Worm)

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On a cold November night in 1988, the glow of a lone monitor lit up a quiet lab at Cornell University. Robert Tappan Morris — 23 years old, brilliant, restless, and carrying the curiosity only early hackers possessed — leaned back in his chair as he compiled the final lines of code.

Captain Crunch & The 2600 Hz Whistle: The Toy That Opened the Phone System

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Long before ransomware, zero-days, or nation-state APTs, the world’s most powerful communications network could be hacked with a plastic toy whistle from a cereal box.

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