5 Biggest Cyber Attacks & How Much Did It Cost Companies? - 31West

If we study history, the relationship between crime and technology is old. The hardware used to implement new technological developments has changed over time. Still, the basic principles of crime remain the same, especially where technology is embedded in the chain of trust.

The cat-and-mouse game between the offender and the investigator is ongoing. Cybercriminals continue to exploit new technologies, and investigators use the same technologies to identify and prevent future cyber-attacks.

Though cyber-attacks were initiated locally, modern attacks on systems or individuals are planned across the nations. Attacks are becoming increasingly unique, notorious, and developed with a distinct strategic advantage.

Today we will look at the top five worst cyber-attacks of all time. There are many ways to rank awful cyber-attacks. The below listed are those cybercrimes that affected the most records, caused loss of the highest amount of dollars, were repeated, and the most flagrant.

5 Most Notorious Cyber-Attacks in History and Their Impact on Businesses

1. Yahoo - The Most Records Stolen

Hackers directly targeted Yahoo’s database of email users in 2013. Verizon dug into Yahoo’s records during due diligence for the acquisition in 2014 and discovered the data breach. Nonetheless, Verizon exposed more than Yahoo revealed.

Technique

The cyber-attack was designed with a spear-phishing email sent to Yahoo’s employees. Still, it’s unsure of the number of employees targeted, even if one employee opens the link, which was enough for hackers to see the result they planned.

Impact on business

Financial Loss

According to the first report, 500 million accounts were affected. The stolen data includes account names, email addresses, telephone numbers, users’ date of birth, passwords, and in a few cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. A further study explored that all existing Yahoo accounts were affected by the data breaches.

Yahoo lost 350 million dollars as Verizon dropped that much of its purchase value. The settlement of many lawsuits caused more losses.

Compliance

Yahoo violated the IT compliance laws by delaying state and federal data breach notification, which resulted in multiple class action lawsuits. There is no more significant damage to an organization than harm to its prestige.

Loss of customers

Customers will not trust companies where their data is not protected. Cyber-attacks reveal a company’s data security status. Consequently, Yahoo lost long-time users, traffic on the site, and ad revenue by offering low prices.

2. Epsilon - Greatest Financial Loss

Epsilon is an international data broker company that became a victim of hackers in 2011, recording the most expensive cyber-attack in history. Out of 50 clients affected in this data breach that included top brands of retailers, financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Best buy co., etc.

For instance, one of their clients, Dallas company, was providing email services to other 2500 companies.

Technique

An attempt was made to gain unauthorized access to Epsilon’s email system. Phishing emails targeted 100 service providers. These targets received emails with content that mentioned employee names and seemed to be receiving from friends or a co-worker.

The phishing attacks were sent to the targets from different systems like online greeting card sites through a botnet. When a person opens the email and clicks on the given link, it takes them to the malicious site, where malware is downloaded to the user’s system.

Impact on business

Financial Loss

Epsilon paid approximately 225 million dollars alone. Its 75 infected clients paid an estimated 410 million dollars. Including forensic audit, litigation, monitoring, and business loss due to cyber-attacks account for three to four billion dollars. The data breach involved 250 million records.

Compliance

Epsilon was warned about the expected potential hacks and to tighten up their security, so they quickly recovered from the cyber-attack and impacted only 3% of their client base. They were following regular compliance notifications.

Loss of clients

Epsilon lost a 45 million dollar business due to losing clients in droves. The breach was so critical that the Secret Service was also involved.

3. Yahoo - The Repeat Offender

One of the most repeated cybercrimes was made by Yahoo. As per the record, hackers hit Yahoo twice, first in 2013 and second in late 2014.

Yahoo struck multiple times with cyber-attacks to the extent that it affected every one of its three billion email account users. That shows 100% failure.

The most irresponsible attempt was that Yahoo did not inform their users, which put them in more trouble. Yahoo delayed notification of the second data breach until 2016. It was scary when it came to the public’s knowledge that their clients’ data was being sold on the dark web.

Until then, the king of search engines in those times maintained silence and said they were unaware of the cyber-attack and loss of their data.

If Yahoo had reported a data breach in 2014 that continued till 2016, it could have protected a significant portion of its users’ data. They could have requested their users to simply reset their passwords and could prevent losing their clients, legacy, and business.

4. Court Ventures - The Biggest Insider Job

It is distressful when cybercriminals come from the back door and steal the company’s client data. But it’s unacceptable when they hit the company’s database from the front door and buy their users’ sensitive data. Court ventures now owned by Experian sold clients’ data to cybercriminals that ran identity theft businesses for a few bucks. The motive was pure profit.

Technique

Hieu Minh Ngo, a 25-year-old Vietnamese, purchased access to clients’ sensitive data, including social security numbers, from Court Ventures. He sold these data to 1300 cybercriminals in the identity theft business. US court sentenced him to 13 years of prison for this role.

Impact on business

Financial loss

Though the actual loss is unknown, the fact is that 14000 consumers became victims of this cyber-attack to income tax fraud that cost a total amount of 65 million dollars. According to reports, around 200 million consumer data records were sold and accessed by hackers. Experian affirmed that there is no compromise for the lost data.

Compliance

The Secret Service notified Experian, who cooperated with the law of enforcement. As it was a front-door cyber-attack, the issue was due diligence in screening the clients to whom Court Ventures sold clients’ data.

Experian acquired Court Venture

Both the companies sued one another. Finally, consumers filed a class action lawsuit against the Court venture for violating Fair Credit Reporting Act. Experian was announced as a new Court Venture owner after more than a year-long investigation and retrieving information from US Info Search.

5. United States Office of Personnel Management - The most Flagrant

A cyber-attack on the US government targeted their personnel records. The decryption of SSL traffic for data integrity led to the discovery of brilliantly installed malware. An attack was planned with high coordination and funded a considerable amount. Cybercriminals hacked the government contractor to steal government data and executed successful data breaches on OPM.

Technique

On May 7, 2014, a Chinese group name X2 used OPM’s stolen credentials from Key Point to install malware for entering through the backdoor and taking hold of government data. Their entry to the personnel data was undetected, and the “big bang” didn’t deny X2’s access.

X2 used faux McAfee security files to transfer data to Steve Rogers’ site. The secret hackers who orchestrated multiple notorious cyber-attacks use avenger’s name to hide their real identity.

Impact

Loss of trust

The most significant damage was losing people’s trust in the agency and the government in large to protect sensitive data. While found no specific link to a particular group of hackers, it was overwhelming agreement that OPM was hacked with the help of state-sponsored attackers working for the Chinese government.

This cyber-attack was considered an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT), where the motive was to target the US economy, politics, and military. The team worked 24-by-7 to destroy malware uploaded on ten systems, including the Admin server.

Hackers got access to millions of employee files, including their fingerprints. The scary part was that investigators did not know where the data went and who had it. At last, OPM’s CIO and the director resigned.

Compliance

OPM failed to prioritize its funding for cyber security compared to other agencies. They lack the structure to implement effective IT compliance policies. They were unable to implement a basic setup like two-factor authentication for giving access to their sensitive personnel data.

According to OPM, they are preventing 10 million hacks every month along history of failures in managing security infrastructure.

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Every business leader in the 21st century believes cyber security is essential to their operation. It’s wisdom to invest in appropriate security tools than losing valuable data, business downtime, and loss of customer loyalty.