Cybercrime is defined as using a computer as a weapon to break laws and commit fraudulent scams, identity theft, data theft, or privacy invasion. Cybercrime has risen in prominence because the computer has become crucial to every field, including government, business, trade, and entertainment. Cybersecurity is vital because it safeguards all types of records against damage and theft. Sensitive data, protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), personal information, data, intellectual property, government, and commercial information systems are all included. If you manage a business or use the internet in any other way, you should take safeguards to protect your data from hackers. Antivirus and anti-malware safety measures are critical for keeping fraudsters out of your system.
1. The NASA Cyber Attack
NASA is considered one of the most secure agencies, and hacking the system software is nearly impossible. A fifteen-year-old teenage boy, James Jonathan, hacked and controlled NASA’s computers and systems for twenty-one days. The incident happened in 1999 and cost around forty-one thousand dollars.
2. Melissa Virus
The Melissa Virus is considered one of the first and most dangerous threats in the cyber world. The programmer, David Lee Smith, spread the virus by sending Microsoft Word files. The first case was reported in 1999, and the virus destroyed thousands of corporate companies, including Microsoft. The virus caused damage of around eighty million dollars.
3. World Of Hell
WoH, or World of Hell, is a grey-hat computer hacking group. The team claims responsibility for the series of high-profile cyber-attacks in 2001. Their main targets were famous companies with the lowest security measures. The interesting part is that they advise on the defacement of it.
4. Stuxnet Attack
The dangerous computer worm Stuxnet has been developing since 2005 but was only uncovered in 2010. They are considered responsible for the damage to Iran’s nuclear program. It is a cyberweapon, and the world believes that the US and Israel jointly put in the same effort to improve this weapon.
5. Shady Rat Operation
The series of cyber-attacks that have been going on since 2006 is called Operation Shady Rat. It was reported in 2011 by the Vice President of threat research and internet security company, Mr. Dimtri Alperovitch. The hackers attacked around seventy-one organizations, including the national Olympic committee and the UN.
6. Estonia: Cyber Attack
Estonia is famous for its geographical specialties and is an economically stable European country. But the country is infamous for the cyber-attack that happened in April 2007. Estonia became a victim of the country-wide cyber-attack. Estonian websites, government authorities websites, media, and bank outlets, went offline during the attack.
7. Ddos Attacks On South Korea
The series of cyber-attacks against the government, financial websites, media, and news in South Korea in 2009. It annihilated one device. There are assumptions that the attack may be related to North Korea because the attacks started, and the date of the short-range ballistic-missile launch was on the same day.
8. Volcanobot Cyber-Attack
Volcanobot is a Trojan botnet that spread all around Vietnam in 2009. The main aim of the hacking was political moves and interests. Firstly, they hacked the Vietnamese Professionals Society, and the VPS keys were replaced by a new backdoored version. Around fifteen thousand computers were hit by the Volcanobot.
9. RockYou Scam
The RockYou IT team was one of the most famous IT firms in the world. In 2009, they were alarmed that the RockYou.com website had been hacked and compromised, exposing around thirty million users’ personal information. The team acted accordingly and brought down the entire site until the security measures took over the situation.
10. LulzRaft
A computer hacker group or a person with a history of a series of Canadian website cyber-attacks in 2011. They claimed that the hacking of the Conservative Party of Canada’s online handle and the posting of a story about the Canadian president was done by the team.
11. Sony’s Playstation Network Cyber Attack
The famous company Sony’s PlayStation network and services were hacked by the hacktivist group Anonymous in 2011 and caused a loss of seventy-seven million users’ personal information. It also restricted many users from the PlayStation3 and prevented the access of portable console users.
12. Operation Ababil
Operation Ababil is a series of cyber-attacks that happened in 2012 on the financial institutions of America. The hacker group called themselves the Cyber Warriors of the Izz Ad-Din Al Qazzam. The justification behind this series of attacks was the response to the innocence of Muslim videos released by an American Paster, which also criticized America and Israel.
13. Shamoon
Shamoon or W32. DistTrack was a computer virus found in 2012 that attacked the Microsoft Windows NT kernel versions. And the destructive nature of the virus led to a huge amount of money for recovery. As the virus spreads from one infected human to another, the virus can spread from one infected device to another through networks.
14. Operation Red October
The cyber spying malware programme Operation Red October, or simply Red October, was launched in 2012.The Russian IT firm Kaspersky uncovered the programme in 2013. The hackers first used emails and attached files to hit the targets. They utilized the loopholes in the Word file and Microsoft Excel.
15. Wiper
A Wiper is a dangerous malware that can wipe all programmes and data from an infected computer’s hardware. The first time Wiper drew the world’s attention to them was with the hacking of the Iranian Oil Company devices. Recovery processes are nearly impossible and costly in this type of attack.
16. Cyber Attack On Adobe
The cyber-attack that happened on the Adobe website in 2013 was something hilarious in world history. At first, the news broke out that the private information of around three million people was compromised, but it turned out to be thirty-eight million users in the end. The hackers hacked the backup website of the page, including passwords and even credit card numbers.
17. The Cyber Attack On Yahoo
During the 2013 cyber-attack on the Yahoo network, 500 accounts were compromised. The company claims that no other information was leaked other than the password and details. But according to the reports, more than one billion users lost their account credibility, with the company’s pride. The main reason for this hacking was the lack of security on the website.
18. Ukraine’s Power Grid Attack
Ukraine has a different story of hacking history. The power grid of Ukraine was hacked in 2015. The result was a six-hour power outage for around two million people. The Russian hacking group known as ‘Sandworm’ took the responsibility for the attack based on the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War.
19. WannaCry Attack
The WannaCry ransomware is known worldwide for using corporate networks to reach out to every website. Around two million computers in more than one-fifty countries were affected by the virus. Also, this outbreak had a massive impact worldwide, including tech-world and industries. The global recovery cost was six billion pounds.
20. A Cyber Attack On Marriott Hotels
Cyber-attacks are not a new or unexperienced thing in history, but the cyber-attack at Marriott hotels is unique because the only one realized it in 2018. Until then, the hacker assessed the data of approximately five hundred million guests. This scam continued for around two years.
