Cyberattacks happen every day, and the number just keeps rising up.
Unfortunately, not many are aware of this imminent threat. It doesn’t matter if these are in wide-scale attacks or isolated incidents, as they can slow down the progress of society and put everyone’s safety at stake.
That’s where cybersecurity comes in as they’re the force that counteracts all these malicious threats.
But then again, they’re not still widely adopted by many households and even companies. It’s indeed important to be aware of this threat so that we can prepare and avoid them from happening to us.
We’ve compiled some of the biggest and most destructive cyberattack incidents in history so we’ll know what to do next time in case these threats start taking shape again.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! has been dominating cyberspace for years, but not anymore now. Well, there are numerous reasons for this. But one huge factor to their decline was in 2013 when their main server was hacked.
This is considered as one of the biggest cybersecurity failures of the century due to its scope. This even had a very strong negative impact on their reputation and ability to compete as a search engine platform and email network.
More than three billion Yahoo! accounts were breached, making this the largest hacking incident in the internet’s history. What’s worse is that the company didn’t share the news to the public after three years.
The breach stole all of the users’ personal and sensitive information such as name, email ad, password, birthday, and phone numbers. Even the security answers were stolen as well and sold by hackers in the Dark Web.
This dealt a massive blow to the company and to their eventual acquisition by Verizon which was worth $4.8 billion.
It’s said that the breach was done by a group that was affiliated and hired by the Russian government.
As a result, Verizon, the company which was buying Yahoo!, decided to remove nearly $400 million from the initial buying price due to the massive hacking incident which put their reputation at stake.
WannaCry
The WannaCry was an infamous cyberattack that put cyberspace on its knees. It was basically a ransomware attack that used the information from the Equation Group and Shadow Brokers to inflict terror on the internet.
It was even considered as an epidemic due to its massive proportions. Specifically speaking, it shut down and corrupted more than 200,000 computers scattered across 150 countries.
What’s worse is that these computers came from vital infrastructures such as those coming from hospitals, factories, and government offices. Medical equipment failed to function and entire factories were even forced to stop their respective productions.
Marriott Hotels
Then there was the cyberattack on Marriott Hotels which is considered as another massively destructive event in the history of the internet.
Hackers breached the hotel chain’s system and gained access to the clients’ personal information.
This includes the name, address, credit card numbers, as well as passport numbers of those who stayed in their hotels from 2014 to 2018. It has been said that the number of affected people was around 350 million to 380 million.
What Now?
One can see how fragile our online presence is, knowing that even huge corporations with strict cybersecurity measures can still fall prey to these attackers.
It then makes sense for them to even improve their already strict measures to avoid such catastrophic events from happening.
This also means that all of us should be aware of the potential dangers that lurk every time we use the internet, knowing that billions of people are connected to it.
It’s only a matter of time before we adopt it fully, for us to ensure the utmost security.
