Top 5 notorious cyber attacks in history
Top 5 notorious cyber attacks in history
Cyber warfare seems to be dominating headlines as of late. Be it a clandestine groups hacking computers for ‘fun’ or alleged government agencies attempting to steal classified information, the Internet landscape has been transformed into a binary battlefield.
1.Robert Tappan Morris and the Morris Worm (1988):
Creator of the first computer worm transmitted through the Internet, Morris, a student at Cornell Univeristy in the USA, claimed it his progeny was not aimed to harm but was made for the innocuous intent to determine the vastness of the cyberspace.
Things went pear-shaped when a the worm encountered a critical error and morphed into a virus which replicated rapidly and began infecting other computers resulting in denial of service. The damage? 6000 computers were reportedly affected causing an estimated $10-$100 million dollars in repair bills.
Creator of the first computer worm transmitted through the Internet, Morris, a student at Cornell Univeristy in the USA, claimed it his progeny was not aimed to harm but was made for the innocuous intent to determine the vastness of the cyberspace.
Things went pear-shaped when a the worm encountered a critical error and morphed into a virus which replicated rapidly and began infecting other computers resulting in denial of service. The damage? 6000 computers were reportedly affected causing an estimated $10-$100 million dollars in repair bills.
2.Google China hit by cyber attack (2009):
When Google's Chinese headquarters detected a security breech in mid-December, it opened up a whole can of worms (pun intended) implicating the Chinese Government.
Hackers had gained access to several Google’s corporate servers and intellectual property was stolen.
In a blog, Google said it has “evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinse human rights activists”. As the company dug deeper, they found numerous Gmail of users from US, China and Europe had been routinely been accessed without permission. Those emails belonged to advocates of human rights in China.
All eyes darted towards the Chinse Government, which has been accused of flagrantly disregarding human rights for years.
Google entered the Chinese market with www.google.cn in 2006 and capitulated to China’s stringent Internet censorship regime. The cyber attacks in December 2009 resulted in the company’s re-evaluation of its business in the country.
In March 2010, Google relocated its servers for google.cn to Hong Kong in order to escape China’s Internet filtering policy.
When Google's Chinese headquarters detected a security breech in mid-December, it opened up a whole can of worms (pun intended) implicating the Chinese Government.
Hackers had gained access to several Google’s corporate servers and intellectual property was stolen.
In a blog, Google said it has “evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinse human rights activists”. As the company dug deeper, they found numerous Gmail of users from US, China and Europe had been routinely been accessed without permission. Those emails belonged to advocates of human rights in China.
All eyes darted towards the Chinse Government, which has been accused of flagrantly disregarding human rights for years.
Google entered the Chinese market with www.google.cn in 2006 and capitulated to China’s stringent Internet censorship regime. The cyber attacks in December 2009 resulted in the company’s re-evaluation of its business in the country.
In March 2010, Google relocated its servers for google.cn to Hong Kong in order to escape China’s Internet filtering policy.
3.Teen hacks NASA and US Defense Department:
The year was 1999. Jonathan James was 15 at the time but what he did that year secured him a place in the hacker’s hall of fame.
James had managed to penetrate the computers of a US Department of Defense divison and installed a ‘backdoor’ on its servers. This allowed him to intercept thousands of internal emails from different government organisations including ones containing usernames and passwords for various military computers.
Using the stolen information, James was able to steal a piece of NASA software which cost the space exploration agency $41,000 as systems were shutdown for three weeks.
According to NASA, “the software [purported to be worth $1.7 million] supported the International Space Station’s physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space.”
James was later caught but received a light sentence due to his young age.
He committed suicide in 2008 after he was accused of conspiring with other hackers to steal credit card information. James denied the allegation in his suicide letter.
4.Hacker targets Scientology (2008):
In January 2008, a New Jersey teenager along with a gang of hackers launched a DDoS attack that crippled the Church of Scientology website for several days.
The group is dubbed Annoymous and is staunchly against the ‘religion’.
Dmitriy Guzner, who was 19 years old, was charged and convicted for the DDoS attack. The maximum penalty was 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine but he was ultimately sentenced to two years probation and was ordered to pay the Church of Scientology $37,500.
A second man has been charged for the attack.
5.The Melissa virus (1999):
It was a very simple virus which ended up costing $80 million in damages.
The Melissa virus would infect Microsoft Word documents and automatically disseminates itself as an attachment via email. It would mail out to the first 50 names listed in an infected computer’s Outlook email address box.
The creator of Melissa, David Smith, said he did not intend for the virus to harm computers but was still arrested and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Incidentally, anti-virus software sales went gangbusters that year.
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