Biggest Cyber Attacks in the World

Cyberattacks are a regrettable reality of modern business. The number of cyberattacks is rising. Cybercriminals seek information they may use for identity fraud or the chance to hold their targets' IT systems hostage because money is their primary motivation. There can be significant repercussions when data breaches occur. It affects clients, suppliers, and more in addition to the target business.

But, cyberattacks can also have political motivations, and businesses may find themselves in the crossfire of nation states trying to obstruct or steal information from their geopolitical rivals.

In this article, we'll examine the amount of users impacted in this post to determine the top five cyberattacks in history. The list makes clear that a sizable amount of consumer information has been taken in the previous ten years, harming the targeted businesses' finances and reputations.

Refer to these articles:

• Cyber Security Challenges in the Banking Sector
• Cyber Security Challenges in the Healthcare Sector
• Cyber Security Challenges in Automotive Sector

What Is a Cyber Attack?

A cyber attack is an attempt to gain access to a computer network or system by cybercriminals, hackers, or other digital enemies, typically with the goal of changing, stealing, destroying, or disclosing information.

Cyberattacks have a broad range of targets, encompassing individual users, commercial entities, and government institutions.The hacker's primary objective when attacking corporations or other organizations is typically to get access to sensitive and priceless firm resources, such as intellectual property (IP), customer data, or payment information.

List of Biggest Cyber Attacks in the World

Alibaba Group in November 2019

A data leak at Alibaba's Taobao shopping site exposed more than 1.1 billion different pieces of user data. Using crawler software, the hacker stole customer information, such as usernames and phone numbers, from the Alibaba Chinese retail website Taobao over the course of eight months. According to reports, the malicious developer started collecting data such as user IDs, mobile phone numbers, and customer reviews in November 2019 using the web crawling program. 

Cyberattack on Yahoo in August 2013 & 2014

One of the largest data breaches in history happened to Yahoo in 2014. A state-sponsored actor breached almost 500 million accounts. At the time, the heist was the largest cyber breach ever known to have occurred. According to reports, thieves grabbed everything from names and email addresses to phone numbers, passwords, and date of birth information. Despite the fact that the attack was carried out in 2004, Yahoo wasn't made aware of the intrusion until after claims of a second breach were published. The inquiry showed out to have considerable information concerning the 2014 attack, disproving every report that had been made.

Cyberattack on Adobe in October 2013

A hack on software developer Adobe compromised around 38 million active users. At first, the business claimed that 2.9 million accounts had been impacted. Also, unidentified numbers of inactive or deleted accounts had had their data obtained by the attackers. Together with user data, the hackers also obtained a portion of the source code for the well-known photo-editing programme Photoshop and Acrobat PDF Editor.Adobe switched to a subscription-based business model for a number of its products in May of that year. Users must now create an account and enter their credit card information.

This cyberattack had only relatively small effects. A lawsuit brought by 15 state attorneys general was settled for $1 million by Adobe. The Dutchman, who was the hacker, was 39 years old, and he also escaped prison.

Cyberattack on LinkedIn in June 2012 & 2021:

Linkedin experienced a data breach in 2012, when it was discovered that password hashes had been obtained by hackers. Later, it was determined that 6.5 million account credentials had been made public on a Russian password forum. Instead of just 6.5 million accounts, as was earlier claimed, the database reportedly has 167 million accounts with 117 broken passwords, according to both Peace and LeackedSource. Also, an estimated 281.5 million people would be impacted by a data breach in 2021. In comparison to the 121 million victims in the first and second quarters, there were 160 million victims in the third quarter. Despite the rise in incidences, there have been 30 million fewer victims overall to date. 

Cyberattack on Facebook in April 2019

Two Facebook app datasets that were made available to the general internet in April 2019 were made public. Phone numbers, account names, and Facebook IDs were among the data, which pertained to more than 530 million Facebook members. Two years later, in April 2021, the data was made freely available, suggesting new and genuine criminal intent about the data. Security researcher Troy Hunt actually added functionality to his HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) breached credential checking site that would enable users to check if their phone numbers had been included in the exposed dataset due to the sheer volume of phone numbers that were impacted and easily accessible on the dark web as a result of the incident.

Cyberattack on Marriott Hotel in September 2018:

The Marriott hotel chain acknowledged a significant database breach that exposed the personally identifiable information of over 500 million visitors in 2018. The problem didn't surface until 2018, despite reportedly being present in the company's technology for a number of years. Two years later, another data breach made the personal information of 5.2 million visitors public. The Marriott hotel group has also been prey to numerous attacks since. The chain acknowledged in 2022 that it had experienced another data breach in which hackers had stolen almost 20GB of data, including payment information for customers and brand-owned business documents.

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Conclusion

In today's world, a thorough cyber Security strategy is vitally necessary. Securing the company's digital assets has the obvious advantage of lowering the danger of loss, theft, or destruction as well as the potential need to pay a ransom to recover control of the systems or data of the company. The organization lessens the impact of cyberattacks on corporate activities by preventing or swiftly remediating them.

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Biggest Cyber Attacks in the World: