Cyber attacks have been a thing for over two decades now however, we hear a lot more about them in the news because cyber security services are so advanced these days. There are still billion-pound companies which are being hacked because hackers are becoming more advanced. One thing that is for sure is that cyber-attacks are not a thing of the past. Here is a list of the most deadly cyber attacks that have been recorded since the digital age began.
The Melissa Virus
One of the biggest cyber-attacks which has happened in the history of the internet is the Mellisa Virus. It happened in 1999 when a programmer named David Lee Smith, released a virus that affected some of the biggest companies such as Microsoft. He did this by hijacking an account on America Online and posting a file on the internet. This document promised adults passwords to websites for which you had to pay a fee. These websites consisted of adult content, and when people opened the document that David Lee Created, it infected their computers, as well as damaged Microsoft programmes. Although this hack didn’t steal confidential information or money, it cost Microsft 80 million dollars to repair their system.
The Estonian Cyber Attack
One of the biggest cyber attacks to happen to a country. The Estonian government were vulnerable to a series of attacks by Russia. Russia began this attack because of a disagreement about moving a war memorial. Around 58 Estonian went offline due to this cyber attack and is believed that there were attempts to edit the English version of the Bronze Soldier’s Wikipedia page. Due to this cyber attack on a country, a lot of countries have used this as an example to improve their cyber security and a lot of them have now set up cyber incident response teams.
Sony PlayStation Attack
For those gamers out there, a lot of people will remember the famous 2011 PlayStation hack. It is one of the most famous cyber attacks due to over 77 million accounts being hacked into. Not only was it one of the biggest security breaches a company has ever had but it led to the longest PS network outage in the history of PlayStation. To deal with the issue, Sony released an update and PlayStation users were forced to change their passwords to deal with the data breach. Although nobody owned up to the cyber attack, the hackers did leave a message for Sony saying “we are Legion” and the file was named Anonymous.
WannaCry Ransomware Attack
A cyber attack that affected the healthcare system of the UK, is one of the more recent cyber attacks that has had the biggest impact. It was a cyber attack which targeted Microsoft operating systems and demanded a payment in the form of Bitcoin. Microsoft dealt with these types of attacks and updated its software. Moreover, companies which didn’t update their Microsoft programmes were victims of these attacks. The result of this led to over 300,000 computers infected and over 200,000 victims.