Top 5 Most Famous Cyber Attacks In The World

The existence of the Internet is the most crucial moment in modern history. It is the perfect tool for our modern world to undergo revolution and globalization which nowadays has become a routine for us to use the Internet for various tasks.

Unfortunately, this also led to the emergence of cyber attacks with many types of security attacks which some might call cyber attacks. Since many of our daily activities requires the use of the Internet, it has now become the primary target for hackers to do their jobs.

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It is happening all over the world causing billions of dollars in losses and ultimately has become a huge catastrophe. You can just imagine that these attacks can also cause a huge blackout across the country or even worse the takeover of nuclear warheads that are being controlled by the government.

Here we would like to share with you the top 5 most famous cyber attacks that have occurred in the world.

5. NASA Being Hacked By A Teenager

For a period of 21 days in 1999, the NASA system was forced to be closed due to what seemed to look like a huge attack on the safety of the nation. 13 systems were compromised including the temperature control and humidity of the residences at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The whole damages were clearly more than $41,000 in equipment and labor costs. The same hacker that goes by the name "c0mrade" online was also responsible for the attack on the Defence Threat Reduction Agency at the same time.

Despite the whole thing looking like something serious to the US by a foreigner, it clearly was done by a teenager who was bored named Jonathan James. He was only 15 years old when he was arrested and sent to the Juvenile Correctional Center in Alabama.

He might just be the youngest hacker out there who managed to perform a high-profile hack making him a popular sensation then, especially in the black hat hacker community that was expanding at the time.

4. Sony PlayStation Network Hacked

The PlayStation Network(PSN) and Qriocity Sony(now known as Sony Entertainment Network were attacked in 2011. The hacker stole the credentials of more than 100 million users including their names, addresses, dates of birth, username, passwords, security questions, and other personal information.

Despite Sony denying the fact that it also includes credit card information, they still issued a statement advising their users to consider their cards being compromised as a step towards vigilance.

This cyber attack might just be the biggest leak in Sony's history that involved the users' past history and the question still remains of the hacker behind this attack. This event also ruins Sony's image and reputation especially since they are one of the biggest repositories for credit card numbers in the US.

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It took Sony more than 3 weeks to settle this issue completely by taking full care of the safety infrastructure of Sony cyber. But it seems that this will forever be a dark history for Sony that everyone will never forget.

3. Hacked To Win A Porsche Car - KIIS-FM

KIIS-FM is a popular radio station in Los Angeles back in 1990 and it is well known for its weekly competition, 'Win a Porsche by Friday'. The main prize will be the Porsche 944 S2 and what needs to be done to be the winner is by being the 102nd caller.

This competition was considered the most glorious contest to be held on the phone in the whole of America. On 1 June 1999, Kevin Poulsen who was 24 years old at the time, grouped together with his friends waiting to be the lucky caller.

They all kept on hacking and blocked all 25 telephone lines of the station before making the right call making them the 102nd caller. Even though they won the car, the truth was finally revealed by law enforcement agencies.

Kevin was definitely an expert when it comes to manipulating the switching network and was also responsible for previous attacks on various telephone companies with similar attacks to the KIIS-FM case.

He managed to make an escape for a while after the attack but all things came to an end for him as Kevin was arrested on April 1999 and sentenced to 5 years in prison.

2. WannaCry Ransomware Tragedy

WannaCry is a computer virus that infected more than 230,000 Microsoft computers around the world in 2017. It is a ransomware attack which is a type of code with malicious intent that uses your computer as a ransom in exchange for something else usually in the form of cryptocurrency.

In this case, the virus managed to lock hundreds of thousands of users around the globe from accessing their personal files and other data. If they were to gain access to them, they have to pay a huge sum of bitcoin in exchange.

After the transaction has been done, the hackers will then send the encrypted keys to unlock the files. It is like the digitalized disease spreading to various systems before it was recognized as a type of virus.

Even until this day, no specific hackers were responsible for this particular attack. Despite the killer switch preventing from the virus spreading to other computers was finally found by a security researcher, Marcus Hutchins, many users who refused to pay the ransom never got access to their files.

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The same attack was believed to have happened to a Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd company based in Taiwan on August 2018.

1. 850,000 Bitcoin Stolen from Mt. Gox

Every cryptocurrency enthusiast would have known about the infamous hack on Mt. Gox involving a huge sum of money which is a whopping 850,000 Bitcoin. Mt. Gox is a cryptocurrency exchange platform based in Tokyo.

In 2013, it has strengthened its position as the biggest exchange center in the crypto space which at the time was considered an early phase for cryptocurrency and is prone to manipulations and hacking.

According to several sources, it was estimated that more than 70% of all the bitcoin being traded around the world was through Mt. Gox. It was considered a peak time for Mt. Gox and also the perfect time for hackers to do their job.

Mt. Gox was hacked in 2014 with more than 850,000 Bitcoin being stolen overnight. It was not a very complex attack since the hacker only utilize a simple book order to manipulate the price and make a fraud exchange to gain as much Bitcoin as possible.

The absence of stringent rules and regulatory bodies from the government revolving around cryptocurrency has made it almost impossible for the hacker to be brought to justice. With that being said, more than 200,000 Bitcoin managed to be returned to their rightful owners.

At the time of writing, the estimated value of the Bitcoin being stolen was more than $23 billion making it the biggest hack in history in terms of losses.

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