A cyberattack is any type of offensive maneuver employed by individuals or whole organizations that targets computer information systems, infrastructures, computer networks, and/or personal computer devices by various means of malicious acts usually originating from an anonymous source that either steals, alters, or destroys a specified target by hacking into a susceptible system.
Indiscriminate attacks
These attacks are wide-ranging, global and do not seem to discriminate among governments and companies.
Red October, discovered in 2012, was reportedly operating worldwide for up to five years prior to discovery, transmitting information ranging from diplomatic secrets to personal information, including from mobile devices.[1]
WannaCry ransomware attack on 12 May 2017 affected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries.[2]
Shamoon, a modular computer virus, was used in 2012 in an attack on 30,000 Saudi Aramco workstations, causing the company to spend a week restoring their services.[3][4]
2008 Cyberattacks during the Russo-Georgian War, a series of cyberattacks that swamped and disabled websites of numerous South Ossetian, Georgian, Russian, and Azerbaijani organizations. The attacks were initiated three weeks before the shooting war began in what is regarded as "the first case in the history of a coordinated cyberspace domain attack synchronized with major combat actions in the other warfighting domains (consisting of Land, Air, Sea, and Space)."
2009 DDoS attacks against South Korea, a series of coordinated cyberattacks against major government, news media, and financial websites in South Korea and the United States.
2009 Shadow Network, a China-based computer espionage operation that stole classified documents and emails from the Indian government, the office of the Dalai Lama, and other high-level government networks.
2010 Australian cyberattacks, a series of denial-of-service attacks conducted by the Anonymous online community against the Australian government in response to proposed web censorship regulations.
2011 Canadian government hackings, hackers using IP addresses from China infiltrated 3 departments within the government and exfiltrated classified data. The attacks resulted in the government cutting off internet access in the departments affected and various responses from both the Canadian government and the Chinese government.
2012 Operation Ababil, a series of cyber attacks starting in 2012, targeting various American financial institutions and carried out by a group calling itself the Cyber fighters of Izz Ad-Din Al Qassam.
2015 Ukraine power grid hack, took place during an ongoing conflict in Ukraine and is attributed to a Russian advanced persistent threat group known as "Sandworm". It is the first publicly acknowledged successful cyberattack on a power grid.
2017 cyberattacks on Ukraine, A series of powerful cyberattacks using the Petya malware began on 27 June 2017 that swamped websites of Ukrainian organizations, including banks, ministries, newspapers and electricity firms. Similar infections were reported in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
2019 cyberattacks on Sri Lanka, The 2019 cyberattacks on Sri Lanka were a series of powerful cyberattacks on at least 10 Sri Lankan domestic websites with the public domains of .lk and .com.
2020 cyberattacks on Sri Lanka, a series of cyberattacks on at least 5 Sri Lankan national websites with the top-level domains of .gov and .com.
2021 Cyberattacks on Sri Lanka, series of cyberattacks on at least 10 Sri Lankan national websites including Google.lk domain
2022 cyberattacks on Romania, which occurred after a visit of Romanian officials to Kyiv where more support against Russia was promised while the invasion was taking place
2023 Cyberattack on Australia, under which the IRGC launched a cyberattack against an Australian organization to obtain data from an extortion and double extortion ransomware operation. Australia expressed deep concern over IRGC's interference, including online harassment of Australian citizens.[8]
Government espionage
These attacks relate to stealing information from/about government organizations:
Google – in 2009, the Chinese hackers breached Google's corporate servers gained access to a database containing classified information about suspected spies, agents, and terrorists under surveillance by the US government.[9]
Gauss trojan, discovered in 2012 is a state-sponsored computer espionage operation that uses state-of-the-art software to extract a wealth of sensitive data from thousands of machines located mostly in the Middle East.[10]
Between 2019 and 2020, Israel was the target of a cyberattack believed to be originating in China and be part of a broader campaign against other countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Thailand.[17]
Between July 7, 2021, and July 14, 2021, the Indian government email infrastructure was compromised thrice with hackers accessing emails of several top officials including that of Ajay Prakash Sawhney, the secretary to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology[18]
Corporate espionage
These attacks relate to stealing data of corporations related to proprietary methods or emerging products/services.
These attacks relate to stealing login information for specific web resources.
RockYou – in 2009, the company experienced a data breach resulting in the exposure of over 32 million user accounts.
Vestige (online store) – in 2010, a band of anonymous hackers has rooted the servers of the site and leaked half a gigabyte's worth of its private data.[19]
Yahoo! – in 2012, hackers posted login credentials for more than 453,000 user accounts,[21] doing so again in January 2013[22] and in January 2014.[23]
Adobe – in 2013, hackers obtained access to Adobe's networks and stole user information and downloaded the source code for some of Adobe programs.[24] It attacked 150 million customers.[24]
LivingSocial – in 2013, the company suffered a security breach that has exposed names, e-mail addresses and password data for up to 50 million of its users.[25]
World Health Organization – in March 2020, hackers leaked information on login credentials from the staff members at WHO.[26] In response to cyberattacks, they stated that “Ensuring the security of health information for Member States and the privacy of users interacting with us a priority for WHO at all times, but also particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.”[27]
Goodwill Industries – in September 2014, the company suffered from a credit card data breach that affected the charitable retailer's stores in at least 21 states. Another two retailers were affected.[30][31]
Home Depot – in September 2014, the cybercriminals that compromised Home Depot's network and installed malware on the home-supply company's point-of-sale systems likely stole information on 56 million payment cards.[32]
StarDust – in 2013, the botnet compromised 20,000 cards in active campaign hitting US merchants.[33]
Target – in 2013, approximately 40 million credit and debit card accounts were impacted in a credit card breach.[34][35][36] According to another estimate, it compromised as many as 110 million Target customers.[37]
Visa and Mastercard – in 2012, they warned card-issuing banks that a third-party payments processor suffered a security breach, affecting up to 10 million credit cards.[38][39]
Subway – in 2012, two Romanian men admitted to participating in an international conspiracy that hacked into credit-card payment terminals at more than 150 Subway restaurant franchises and stole data for more than 146,000 accounts.[40]
MasterCard – in 2005, the company announced that up to 40 million cardholders may have had account information stolen due to one of its payment processors being hacked.[41][42][43][44]
The DAO fork – in June 2016, users exploited a vulnerability in The DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization formed as a venture capital fund, to siphon a third of the fund's ether (about $50 million at the time of the hack).[45]
Poly Network exploit – in August 2021, anonymous hackers transferred over $610 million in cryptocurrencies to external wallets. Although it was one of the largest DeFi hacks ever, all assets were eventually returned over the following two weeks.[46]
Wormhole hack – in early February 2022, an unknown hacker exploited a vulnerability on the DeFi platform Wormhole, making off with $320 million in wrapped ether.[47][48]
Ronin Network hack – in March 2022, North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus Group used hacked private keys to withdraw $625 million in ether and USDC from the Ronin bridge,[49][50] an Ethereum sidechain built for the NFT-based video game Axie Infinity.
Nomad bridge hack – in early August 2022, hackers targeted a misconfigured smart contract in a "free-for-all" attack,[51] withdrawing nearly $200 million in cryptocurrencies from the Nomad cross-chain bridge.[52]
BNB Chain hack – in early October 2022, about $570 million in cryptocurrency was stolen from a bridge for the BNB Chain, a blockchain operated by the Binance exchange.[55] Because a majority of the tokens could not be transferred off-chain, the hacker ultimately made off with about $100 million.[56]
Stolen medical-related data
By May, three healthcare payer organizations had been attacked in the United States in 2014 and 2015: Anthem, Premera Blue Cross and CareFirst. The three attacks together netted information on more than 91 million people.[57]
