05 of the Most Infamous Cyber Attacks

It was the perfect tool for the increasingly globalized modern world, which is now as much a daily necessity as groceries. Unfortunately, everything comes at a price. The Internet has also brought with it a whole new type of security threat, which we don't yet have the tools to deal with: cyberattacks.

With our reliance on products and services that run on the World Wide Web, everything is now a potential target for a variety of cyberattacks from any part of the world, which can easily escalate into a major disaster. Imagine the fallout from massive power outages across the country, or remote hostile takeovers of state-controlled nuclear facilities.

While the actual attacks recorded have not yet reached this scale, they are not far behind. These top 05 cyberattacks in history prove that despite the best efforts of law enforcement and cybersecurity agencies around the world, they have only become more frequent and sophisticated over time.

1. Church of Scientology

We don't know exactly what the Church of Scientology is or what it does, although that's not what it's about. Instead, we're here to focus on their cybersecurity infrastructure, which was seriously compromised in 2008 by an emerging group of hackers known as Anonymous. This was in response to what he called censorship, in which one of his videos on Tom Cruise was removed by the Church.

In response, hackers around the world launched a concerted campaign to take down websites related to the Church, using methods to vandalize a part of digital life, such as swarming letters around their offices. Sending spam on major fax machines. Although not fatal or meaningful in any real way, it was the first anonymous attack to make headlines around the world. The hack mostly involved denial-of-service attacks, a method still popular and widely used by hackers today.

2. The Teenaged NASA Hack

For 21 days in 1999, NASA systems had to be shut down due to what initially appeared to be a major coordinated attack on national security. Thirteen systems were compromised, including temperature and humidity controls in living quarters at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The total cost of materials and labor costs was over $41,000.

The same hacker - known as "c0mrade" online - was also responsible for a parallel attack on the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the same time. They hacked into the usernames and passwords of 19 employees, using them to gain access to 10 military computers.

While this all sounds like a dangerous attack on America by a foreign power, it turns out he's just a bored teenager. Jonathan James was just 15 years old when he was arrested and sent to a correctional facility in Alabama for the attack. He was probably the youngest hacker to perform such a high-profile hack, which made him instantly popular in the thriving black hat hacker community at the time.

3. KIIS-FM

KIIS-FM was a popular Los Angeles radio station in the 1990s, best known for its weekly "Win a Porsche by Friday" contest. The prize was a Porsche 944 S2, and everyone had to be the 102nd caller to win. This was the golden age of contests on landlines across America, and one could get people lucky with robo-dialers and other tricks all over Los Angeles.

While this sounds like a secure system—at least in the 1990s, when computers were still in their relative infancy—it really wasn't. On June 1, 1999, Kevin Paulson—then 24—got together with a few friends, waited for the 101st call, and hacked and jammed all 25 phone lines of the station before making the call. to, making him the 102nd caller. When he won the car, law enforcement quickly discovered the break-in.

Kevin was an expert at manipulating switch networks, and was responsible for previous attacks on various telephone companies' systems, such as KIIS-FM. While he managed to escape briefly after the break-in, Kevin was finally caught in April 1991, and sentenced to five years in prison.

4. Solar sunrise

Solar Sunrise was the working name for what appeared to be a large-scale and sophisticated attack against the Department of Defense in February 1998. The attackers took control of more than 20 root systems, and used them to access sensitive information about organizations like NASA. US Air Force, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others. They also stole hundreds of employee usernames and passwords, and attacks appeared to occur from all over the world.

Initially, the perpetrators were believed to be Iraqi intelligence agents, as US forces prepared to bomb Iraq later that year. 

After an extensive investigation involving many intelligence agencies, ISPs and senior military officials around the world, the attackers were identified as two Californian teens and an Israeli.

5. WannaCry

WannaCry was an aptly named virus that infected more than 230,000 Microsoft computers worldwide in May 2017. It was ransomware - a type of malicious code that takes your computer hostage in exchange for something, usually cryptocurrency. . In this case, the virus was able to lock millions of users around the world from their personal files and other data, demanding a large amount of bitcoin in return. Once the transaction is complete, the hackers will then send you the decryption keys to unlock the files.

It was more like a digital pandemic and spread to millions of systems before it was identified as a virus, although no specific hacker group has claimed responsibility to this day. While the lock key that stopped it from spreading was eventually discovered by security researcher Marcus Hutchins, many users who refused to pay the ransom were unable to recover their files. The same attack was reportedly used against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd in August 2018.