You know how scientists hypothesize that there are an infinite number of universes? 2016 is a year that forces me to confront the reality that they may be right. I've been starting to think that we live in one of the bizarre, alternate universes where crazy things happen on a regular basis. In all those the other sane universes, the following things didn't happen in 2016: George Michael, "singer of Last Christmas", doesn't die... on Christmas Murder clowns don't hide in the woods and cause teen panic. The Cubs don't come from 3-1 to win the World Series in game 7. Harambe doesn't gather 14,000 votes in the presidential election. A reality show star doesn't become the President of the United States. The closer you look the more you'll realize that I'm right. It's unsettling to think about it. So let's think about something else - how about a retrospective on the ramblings of your rogue security storyteller. Also check out this cool Spanish vanity website I built with Django.  www.davidholm.es/pro/year/2016 Drawing from this archival site for all things yours truly, we can see there are 47 items to choose from. That's too many, so let's just do have a look at the best ones. Network World: What Keeps White Hat Hackers from Turning the Dark Side? The idea for this, one my favorite articles ever, had been rattling around my head for years. The premise came from a lunch discussion among my friends: "how much would it take for you to hack for evil?"  I surveyed over three dozen of my friends and colleagues to find out what their prices were, if any. Some illuminating results.  DevCentral Video: SSL Outbound Lightboard Lesson People loved this 12-minute video illustrating a complex problem. Well my colleagues did anyway. Had fun flying to St. Louis where Jason Rahm and John Wagnon let me use their supercool lightboard studio. Newsroom: Making Sense of the Krebs / OVH / Dyn DDoS Attacks Here's my take on the huge DDoS attacks of September and October 2016. Had to rush this one to release as an official company position on the attacks. I really like how it came out. One customer read it and said "We need to talk to the guy that wrote this! Get him here!" Blog: The Top Ten Hardcore F5 Security Features in BIG-IP 12.1 It took me 23 hours to write this! But people LOVED IT. Continuing my tradition of the top security features of each F5 BIG-IP release. Follow my countdown of the top ten most hardcore security features in the TMOS 12.1 release. Whitepaper: 2016 DDoS Attack Trends Here's an awesome whitepaper I wrote in the fall of 2016. I embedded eight references to Huey Lewis and the News. Can you find them all?   SecurityWeek: Is DROWN a 'Hello Kitty' SSL Vulnerability? Should you panic about the DROWN SSL vulnerability? Is it cute and kid-friendly, or is it a monster vulnerability coming to expose your most sensitive data? This piece I did for SecurityWeek builds upon the "Stack Ranking SSL Vulnerabilities" article I'd written the year before. SecurityWeek: Cyber Espionage Report: APT at RUAG I get lucky sometimes. This was one of those times. I ran into a member of CERT.be, and he told me of an interesting report about a cyberespinage case in Europe. Made for a great SecurityWeek article. DevCentral iRule: Mirai Strikeback - an iRule to kill IoT Bot Processes from your F5 Wrote this cool script to kill Mirai bots that are attacking your website. So satisfying because how often do you get to strike back at your cyber attackers? Almost never! Use at your discretion, because technically it's a bit of a hack, and hacking is illegal kids. So many consider this a proof concept. SecurityWeek: Hacking Europe's Smart Cities A young hacker came up to me after a talk in Belgium and told me how some hackers were taking slight advantage of the smart city infrastructures in Europe. Made for a