With the world being transitioned to operate everything online, cyber-attacks have become more intense and tend to impact a large number of people at once. From online meetings and virtual classes to the ease of making online payments, literally, everything can now be done virtually using our mobiles and computers. This has given the attackers to pinpoint the loopholes and use them to their full advantage.
Here’s a list of the top 10 most vicious cyber-attacks of all time:
- Marriott International Hotels- Customer’s privacy compromised
The first most vicious cybersecurity attack to have ever happened is the one that stumbled upon the Marriott International Hotel group. Not once but the hotel group has been a victim of such an attack twice in just a span of two years. Information, even including the banking details and the login credentials, related to approximately 5.2 million guests was viciously accessed by the cyber attackers. It was on March 31, 2020, that the hotel group came forward to announce the attack. The data breach took place from the hotel’s application which was accessed by the customers.
2 . Hijacking high-profile Twitter Accounts
Twitter is an amazing place to express our views in just a few short sentences. It is a social media platform accessed by people from all over the world. Be it CEOs, politicians, celebrities, or journalists, Twitter is a place for all. And with such high-profile people actively present on the platform, the risks of an account being hijacked and misused increase a lot. Addressed as a case of phone phishing, the cyber attackers gained access to Twitter’s internal management systems and went on to hack numerous high-profile accounts. Some of them included that of Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Former American President Barack Obama, and Elon Musk of Tesla.
3 . Adobe- 2.9 million accounts information stolen
One of the world’s most renowned computer service companies Adobe faced a massive hacking attack some time ago. It was in October 2013, that the company’s IT infrastructure was greatly impacted. Almost 2.9 million of Adobe’s customer accounts information was stolen by hackers. From logins and passwords, to credit card numbers and names, everything was hacked. It was later discovered that these hackers tried to take advantage of the publisher’s security breach. Fortunately, due to the high-quality encryption used by Adobe, the cyber attackers failed to take an advantage of the bank details they had already collected.
4 . Toll Group- Hit by Ransomware twice
This is known to be one of the world’s most notorious cyber-attacks of all time to top the records. Toll Group, Australian transportation, and logistics company were enormously hit by ransomware, not once but twice in just three months. Although addressed as separate incidents, they were both based on different types of ransomware. Toll Group on February 3 last year, made an announcement on Twitter about the cyber-attack. Due to this incident, the company had to temporarily shut down a number of its systems. This highly impacted the Toll Groups application accessed by people around the world.
5 . Sony’s PlayStation Network Attacked
Source: vox
Sony, the Japanese conglomerate is the next one to face the lash of some of the world’s most known cyber-attacks. It was in April 2011 that the company’s popular online gaming network called the ‘Sony PlayStation’ was attacked by hackers. As the multiplayer network is distributed all over the world and most of the purchases are conducted online, Sony has its customer’s personal data. Over 77 million users of this multimedia company were impacted by the attack. Everything including their names and banking information was compromised. Due to this, Sony even had to pause all its operations for around a month.
6 . Yahoo’s Cyber Attack
Source: BBC
It was in 2014 that Yahoo was impacted by a cyber-attack. Around 500 million users who had their Yahoo accounts were posed at a high-security risk. All the personal information including their names, telephone numbers, date of birth, and passwords were stolen. For this, the Yahoo Cyber Attack is even regarded as one of the largest massive hacking done against a single company. Prior to this, in 2012, a hacker who called himself ‘Peace’ hacked and sold the account information of 200 million users at just $1900.Again in 2016, the company confessed to being hacked for the third time.
7 . Target- Users Data Hijack
The second-largest U.S. retail chain, Target, to have been a victim of a massive cyber-attack. This data hijack took place somewhere between27 November and 15 December 2013, when the data of approximately 110 million users was stolen. Everything including their personal information like address, mobile number, emails as well as bank details were hijacked. And the funny thing about this cyber-attack is that Target, the company itself was not the one to pinpoint a security breach, but the American secret services that noticed something suspicious. They immediately warned the retail chain to take action.
8 . SolarWinds- High-profile Users Affected
Source: helpnetsecurity
SolarWinds, an American software development company, is yet another one of the companies to face a vicious cyber-attack. The victims who were mostly high-profile people were majorly impacted. This made the SolarWinds cyber-attack one of the biggest attacks of not just 2020, but of the whole decade! The hackers attacked the backdoor of the company’s Orion platform and posed a security threat as and when the customers would update the software. This attack was, in fact, one of the eye-openers about the security posture of big companies. The hackers were later found to be situated outside of the country.
9 . Garmin’s Ransomware Attack
Source: forbes
Another American multinational company to become a victim of a large cyber-attack, Garmin reported having faced a ransomware attack on 27 July. A variety of company’s functions like customer support, the Garmin website, and other customer-facing applications, were majorly disrupted for some time. Simply put, the communication systems of Garmin suffered immensely due to the ransomware attack. Although a press release stated that there was no sign of any user information being stolen, accessed, or lost, there still were rumors around the security breach. Later, it was also heard that Garmin paid off $10 million on hackers’ demand.
10 . Magellan- 365,000 Patients impacted by the Ransomware Attack
Magellan, an American healthcare insurance company with a great reputation in the States, too faced one of the most vicious cybersecurity attacks ever. On May 12, the company addressed all the people who stated to have suffered a ransomware attack. Information including the login and passwords, personal information like names and emails as well as tax information. Approximately 365,000 patients were impacted by this attack.
