You might have heard about Ransomware..!!
Right..??
If not then please google this word “Ransomware”, you will get to know how powerful cyber attack it was. It has shaken more than 150 countries.
Can you imagine.. 150 countries..!! That much powerful it was.. But this was not the first cyber attack… There have been many.. since the invention of Internet.
If you define hacking, it is a technique to take complete control over the system and use it as you want to… but its side effects can be worst.
Here we are going to present among you Top 8 most Bizarre Hacks in the History of this world which have shaken this Internet World.
So here is the list of top 8 Cyber Attacks
The Morris Worm (1988)
This was the first ever Computer Worm created and was named after the student who created it, Robert Tappan Morris. Morris was a student at Cornell University. Though he told that his intention was onlny to determine the vastness of this cyber world.. but would you believe him..?? Nobody did.
Things got worst when worm encountered a critical error and got converted into a virus which replicated itself very rapidly and as a result it created a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service).
The total damage was estimated to be $10-$100 Million Computer Repairs and reportedly 6000 computers were affected.
NASA & US Defense Department Hacked by a Teen(1999)
A teen named Jonathon James managed to oenetrate entry into US Defense department systems and successfully installed a Backdoor on them.
He was just 15 years old when he managed to do all these things and due to which he will always be remebered, as he is no more now (committed suicide).
Using the backdoor installed he was able to intercept all the emails from Government Organizations including the ones with confidential credentials as well. Usig this information he was able to steal a Software worth 1.7 Million Dollars patented under NASA which caused the space agency being shutdowned for 3 weeks and a loss of $41000.
The Melissa Virus (1999)
This one is my favorite (Though I am not a hacker), But this Virus targeted Microsft Office or MS-Word to be precised.
David Smith also said that his intentions were not to harm anybody like Morris but was imprisoned for 20 Months.
This was a simple virus which infects MS-Word Files and disseminates itself to the first 50 Outlook contacts as an email attachment. This simple concept costed the world around $80 Million.
Internet Attacked (2002)
Imagine a cyber attack which halted the Internet all over the world. Yes, you read it right. Interet was on standstill for about an hour. Although at that time users didnt experienced much problems but imagine iif it would have lasted longer.
Being describes as the most complex and powerful hacks that time, it targeted 13 main Domain Names root servers in US vis DDoS. Not the time frame but the scale on which the attack took place was the worry.
Tens of Millions of Credit card details stile (2009)
A Miami based hacked t Gonzales was responsible for one of the Biggest Frauds in US History. Not one or two he had stolen Millions of Credit and Debit Card information from over 250 financial institutions. Not only this, he hacked the complete Payment card network from companies including the famous 7-elevn convenient store chain.
He pled Guilty same year in December after facing multiple separate cases of hacking.
Dyn DDoS Attack (2016)
Thousands of IoT devices were compromised resulting in a DDoS of 1TBPS of size. That’s really huge. This attack compromised the endpoint of IoT devices around 20000 in count transforming them into Botnet and flooding traffic to DNS hosting provider Dyn ( acquired by Oracle).
This led to the disruption in many of the famous websites including Twitter, PayPal, Pinterest and many others. The main concern was its size 1TBPS.
AdultFinder.com attacked(2016)
AF has a history of being hacked for the sensitive information but we inicluded this hack of 2016 here because of the size. around 412 Million users had their information now on the Dark web in criminal marketplace.
The breached data included emails,passwords,VIP member status, Browser info, Last IP address to log in and all the purchases. Now with all this information floating on the web what cant be done.. this is worth billions.
For online Privacy we need more security mechanisms to be installed specially on Platform having huge chunks of Data like AdultFinder.
Yahoo massive Data Breach(2016)
Once upon a time Yahoo wanted to buy Google, then they became competitors,now it has been sold. But the userbase and data which Yahoo was having is huge.
It suffered massive data breach in 2016, which has been declared as the Biggest data breach in the History till now. The company had admitted around 500 million customers may have had their data stolen including Names, email addresses,phone numbers, hashed passwords as well.
Yahoo also had a hostory of data being stolen in 2014 when it was reported that it could have been saved because a warning was given 2 months prior.
Cyber attacks are common now a days. As you can clearly see out of 8, 3 are from 2016. Their frequency and size is getting increased day by day. If you follow some basic Principles you might get saved from any kind of Hack.
Let us know in comments, if you know any hack this massive.
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