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 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.
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.
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.
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.
