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Breaking Badness
Breaking Badness

The Best of 2023

Thanks For A Great 2023!

2023 was another great year for Breaking Badness! The team at DomainTools has been working hard to bring you the latest in information security/cybersecurity news. In 2023 we were also able to bring you more guest episodes, sound bites from the RSA floor, our anticipated 150th episode, and the launch of our Book Club

What’s coming in 2024? Our goal is always to bring more guests onto the podcast so listeners can hear about various paths to infosec careers (and often they’re non-linear), the latest in research and takedowns, and top cybersecurity book picks. We should also hit Episode 200 in 2024, so stay tuned for that!

Thank You To Our Guests

We had really amazing guests join us in 2023 for our Voices from Infosec series, Book Club, and for special reports. Special thank you to: 

Top Punny Names of 2023

These come in no particular order other than they made Kali laugh – but perhaps when we do this again for 2024 we’ll have a voting system so you, the listeners, can contribute to the Top Punny Names. 

Top Breaking Badness Episodes of 2023

This ranking system comes from our analytics, so there’s more rhyme and reason as to what was selected and we’ll count down to the top episode of 2023.

5. Episode 174.Pick your DNS Cache Poison 

This is a newer episode at the time we are publishing this count down list! In this episode, Kali, Tim and Taylor discuss an attack on a municipal water authority along with Timo Longin and SEC Consult’s latest research on DNS Cache poisoning.

4. Episode 152. Good Will Threat Hunting 

First of all, this is another good pun name for an episode. But that’s neither here nor there. In this episode, Kelsey, Taylor, and Tim discuss the Cisco Talos Ukraine task force one year into the Ukraine/Russia conflict along with uncropping bugs found in Google Pixel and Windows 11. 

3. Episode 148. What Not To Ransomware

In this episode, Kelsey, Taylor, and Ian get out the popcorn to discuss the dismantling of Exclu along with hackers who exploited a two-year old VMware vulnerability 

2. Episode 149. You Data Broker My Heart

This was the last episode before our big two-parter 150th episode! In this episode, Kelsey, Taylor, and Daniel discuss the rise of phishing-as-a-service (PaaS) along with an article Daniel surfaced on how mental health data is obtained by third party data brokers. 

And finally, the number 1 episode of Breaking Badness in 2023 is…

[Special Report] Quadrant Security 

In this episode, we spoke with Champ Clark III and Steven Drenning-Blalock from Quadrant Security on their experience thwarting the Black Basta ransomware gang. It’s a gripping story and was so popular, we re-shared it in November as Black Basta made the rounds in the media cycle again. 

Thank You To Our Listeners

We had a fantastic year in 2023 with Breaking Badness. It’s our goal to keep defenders apprised of pertinent news and trends, so we hope you find our podcast both informative and enjoyable. I’m sure that we’ll have lots to talk about in 2024 but again, thank you for listening. We’ll be back to our regular programming next week and have a great year!


That’s about all we have for this week, you can find us on Twitter @domaintools, all of the articles mentioned in our podcast will always be included on our podcast recap. Catch us Wednesdays at 9 AM Pacific time when we publish our next podcast and blog.

*A special thanks to John Roderick for our incredible podcast music!