History of security

Diffie–Hellman published the idea of public key exchange — the foundation under TLS, digital signatures, and today's passkeys.

The first large-scale internet worm — it hit many machines and prompted the creation of CERT. It taught the world that running code spreads.

Formed in the worm's wake as the first center to coordinate vulnerability response — the seed of coordinated disclosure.

Encryption for web traffic arrives (later standardized as TLS) — the core of HTTPS that stops eavesdropping and tampering.

The flaw where input hijacks a database query enters wide awareness — still top-tier risk. Defense: parameterized queries.

A shared ID for each vulnerability begins — so the whole world can name the same hole the same way.

A worm that spread explosively via email attachments — an early template for socially-engineered infection.

A worm that saturated the internet in minutes — proof that an unpatched, known bug can become a global outage.

The list that distilled web-app risk into ten items — a common language for developers ever since.

An XSS worm that reached ~1M profiles in a day — a vivid lesson in why output must be escaped.

The common security standard for anyone handling card data — the start of compliance-driven security.

A botnet that reached millions of machines — another reminder of how dangerous slow patching is.

A nation-state attack on industrial control systems — proof that a cyber attack can break physical equipment.

An OpenSSL flaw that could leak private keys and sessions from server memory — the emblem of dependency risk.

A Bash flaw that could allow remote code execution — a hole in a ubiquitous component has vast reach.

A phishing-resistant second-factor standard arrives — the path that leads to passkeys.

Free, automated TLS certificates — the turning point that made HTTPS the default rather than a luxury.

Hijacked IoT devices with default passwords into a massive DDoS — the danger of default/weak credentials.

Worldwide ransomware damage — unpatched systems plus fast spread can halt whole organizations.

~147M records lost via an unpatched Apache Struts flaw — the worst-case cost of ignoring a dependency CVE.

The EU's sweeping data-protection law — breaches now carry heavy fines and notification duties.

SSRF plus a cloud misconfiguration exposed 100M+ records — the archetypal cloud-era design mistake.

A supply-chain attack hidden inside a legitimate software update — the trusted distribution path itself weaponized.

Tampering with a CI tool leaked many secrets — spreading the realization that the build pipeline is a target too.

A Log4j flaw where merely logging a string could run code — a hard lesson in patching dependencies fast.

A phishing-resistant replacement for passwords ships across major OSes and browsers.

Mass exploitation of a file-transfer product's flaw — one component's hole cascaded to thousands of organizations.

A backdoor nearly slipped into a ubiquitous compression library, caught just in time — supply-chain attacks getting subtle.

Generative AI accelerates both attack and defense — with new pitfalls like leaked keys and prompt injection.