10 Biggest Hacking Attacks of 2014

10 Biggest Hacking Attacks of 2014
It is very difficult to decide whether it was the
biggest hacking attack or the worst hacking attack
that created a sense of insecurity in the mind of
common users, 2014 is about to end (well happy
new year and holidays) and the echo of the
hacking attack carried out in this year, will be
listened in the next year or may be in many years
after.
2014 was the year of cyber criminals and hackers,
their unstoppable hacking attack has shocked the
world's population; from corporate sectors to the
famous celebrities; everyone seems to be their
target. While writing this article, I am still thinking
to rearrange the list of hacking attacks because
every attack was a disaster and it is not an easy
job to give them a rank.
10. Heartbleed Bug
Heartbleed was not an actual hacking attack but
heartbleed is a bug/vulnerability in the popular
OpenSSL software that led many hackers to exploit
the servers. Heatbleed was the serious security
threat even six months after of its discovery. One
the POC of heartbleed is that the hackers exploited
it to steal4.5 Million patient records; Community
Health Systems, the renowned hospital operator in
U.S was the victim of this hacking attack.
9. Shellshock
ShellShock vulnerability was bigger than
HeartBleed Bug. It was affecting Linux and Mac OS
X, Shellshock was targeting the kind of machine
that runs most of the servers around the globe.
Hackers created their botnet that exploited the
shellshock vulnerability, some of the famous target
was:
Akamai
United States Department of Defense
NAS (network attached storage system)
8. Neiman Marcus Hack
More than 1.1 million customers were affected in
the hack of high-end retailer Neiman Marcus. The
sophisticated, self-concealing malware was
"clandestinely" installed on the department store
operator's system. The software then actively tried
to collect or "scrape" payment card data from July
16 to Oct. 30, the company explained.
7. Ebay
In May, eBay revealed that hackers had managed
to steal personal records of 233 million users. The
hack took place between February and March, with
usernames, passwords, phone numbers and
physical addresses compromised. The notorious
Syrian Electronic Army had claimed the
responsibility of this attack but Ebay or any other
authentic source did not confirm it.
6. South Korea Credit card hack
South Korea credit card hack was the nightmare
for the infosec security professionals. Credit card
details from almost half of all South Koreans have
been stolen and sold to marketing firms. The data
was stolen by a computer contractor working for a
company called the Korea Credit Bureau that
produces credit scores. 20 million South Koreans
or 40% of the country's population was the victim
of this attack.
5. Home Depot
The payment system of one of the largest home
improvement retailer was hacked, the corporation
said that the hacking attack was bigger than the
one that struck Target Corp. last year. In addition
to the 56 million credit-card accounts that were
compromised, Home Depot said around 53 million
customer email addresses were stolen as well.
4. JPMorgan credit card hack
The JPMorgan Chase & Co breach is being called
the worst known compromise in history, affecting
approximately 76 million households and 7 million
small businesses. Contact information, including
name, address, phone number and e-mail address,
as well as internal JPMorgan Chase information
about the users, was compromised.
3. iCloud Hacks - Celebrities Photos
This is one of the famous hacking attack where
hackers have posted the nude pictures of
celebrities on the Internet. The privacy of many
celebrities were invaded when a hacker obtained
personal photographs from various digital devices,
and began spreading them across the Internet, all
the photographs were stolen from iCloud. Apple
said it was a targeted attack and none of the
cases they have investigated has resulted from any
breach in any of Apple's systems including iCloud
(R) or Find my iPhone.
2. Sony Hacks
On November 24, 2014, personally identifiable
information about Sony Pictures Entertainment
(SPE) employees and their dependents, e-mails
between employees, information about executive
salaries at the company, copies of unreleased Sony
films, and other information, was obtained and
released by a hacker group going under the
moniker "Guardians of Peace" or "GOP".
1. Regin
On November, Symantec has discovery piece of
software called Regin, which it had found lurking
on computers and stealing data in Ireland, Russia,
Saudi Arabia and several other countries. Regin
may have been created by Western state to spy on
governments, it can steal password, take snapshot
and even recover the deleted files. Researcher
claimed that Regin is more advanced than Stuxnet,
which was developed by US and Israel government
hackers in 2010 to target the Iranian nuclear
programme. The European Union and a Belgian
telecommunications company were also the target
of Regin.
Cybercrime and hacking attack have reached new
heights. At the end of 2014, we should start
working to create security awareness in order to
prevent the hacking attacks in future. We need
more advance protection system and the training
to think smarter than hackers; yes we can do this
because this is the only option that we have.