It is 2019, and we are living in a world run by computers and technology, which is something that’s both good and dangerous at the same time. Why dangerous you might ask? Take a look at these statistics.
Back in 2016, about 751 million malicious cyber-attacks were carried out, most of them targeting businesses and the rest being personal computers. According to KasperskyLab, the team which provided this statistic, they also said that 2019 will definitely be breaking the record of cyber-attacks.
So, in order to raise awareness for the “future” which is happening right now, we wanted to take a bit of a trip down memory lane, and take a look at some of the largest and most memorable cyber-attacks in the history of humanity.
What are cyber-attacks?
Before we start listing the most famous attacks, we just want to clarify a few things for those readers who are not really familiar with cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks are carried out by computer experts which are often called “hackers”, and the goal of these attacks is to do some kind of a cyber-damage to a person, business, company or even a corporation.
What kind of damage you might ask? Well, if the attack is meant to harm a person, it can be anything from stealing personal data, photos or other sensitive stuff from their computer. If the target is a business or even a corporation, stealing marketing plans, sensitive data and other business secrets is something that can do tons of damage.
Now that you have a slightly better picture of what the goal of cyber-attacks is, let’s take a look at some of the most memorable ones.
The Largest cyber-attacks in history
The Adobe 2013 Hack
Back in October 2013, Adobe was attacked by an unknown group of hackers, and they announced that they’ve sensitive personal information for more than 2.9 million accounts. Logins, passwords and credit card information were all exposed to the public, and it was a very big catastrophe. There is certainly no doubt that Adobe lost a lot of reputation in the eyes of their users after this event happened. After this, Adobe invested a lot into their security, which is something that you should be doing as well if you want to avoid events of this nature. Feel free to click here if you want to learn more.
The 2014 Yahoo Hack
Back in 2014, Yahoo was attacked by an unknown group of expert hackers, and this attack is still considered to be one of the largest information-stealing attacks that ever happened to a company. Yahoo lost more than 500 million user accounts in the process, which is a number that really leaves a scar into the company’s career.
The notorious “WannaCry” epidemic
A famous hacker group made a malware named “WannaCry” and it affected more than two hundred thousand computers in 150 different countries, and most of them included facilities such as hospitals, factories and what not. Some of these facilities were forced to stop production and hospitals became out of use due to the malware encrypting all computers and equipment. Even up to this day, WannaCry is one of the most feared malware ever made, and it definitely left a big scar in the history of hacker-attacks.
