Along with the trend of global digital transformation, the number of cyber attacks is also increasing year by year, with increasing severity and sophistication.

Let’s take a look at some of the largest recorded cyberattacks in the world with VSEC: 

1. Hackers infiltrated the data of the famous software company Adobe (2013)

Adobe announced in October 2013 that hackers had stolen data from the internet, including up to 2.9 million accounts’ personal information (usernames, passwords, real names, credit card numbers, and expiration dates). Soon after, internet hackers reported that this database had up to 150 million accounts (38 million of which are still active).

2. Sony’s expensive lesson in ignoring hackers’ warnings.

• In April 2011, hackers targeted Sony PlayStation Network (PSN), causing Sony’s Multiplayer gaming service, online game purchases, and other content to be leaked. The personal information of 77 million global gamers was involved in the incident, and hackers acquired access to their banking accounts.
• Sony was forced to pay $15 million in compensation to individuals harmed in order to pacify users. This corporation, on the other hand, detested hackers at the time when it rejected the warning for exposing the database vulnerability. The data is entirely unprotected and vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks.

Sony Pictures Entertainment, a Sony subsidiary, was attacked in November 2014 by a virus called “Guardians of Peace,” and the damage was significantly worse than before, surpassing 100 terabytes (1TB = roughly 1000 GB) with stolen confidential data. This time, hackers utilized the internet to steal movie scripts, emails, and personal information from 47,000 employees, forcing many to resign as a result of the loss.

3. A nightmare for the Korean banking system in 2014.

The key lesson learned by the Korean government after the cyber attack in January 2014 when hackers stole up to 100 million credit card numbers. 20 million more bank accounts were also compromised. The number of clients in these banks decreased by 2 million due to their concern that their personal information would be revealed, therefore they went to the bank to deactivate the card or switch to a safer bank.

4. The American credit company, Equifax, was on the verge of bankruptcy (2017)

Equifax, the credit reporting agency in the United States, acknowledged in a report that it has been dealing with a problem for months as a result of an internet attack. In July of 2017, they discovered the attack, which exposed the sensitive personal information of 143 million users in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as roughly 200,000 credit card numbers. 

Almost no solutions could assist the organization in recovering the information that was leaked as a result of the 2017 cyber attack. This incident was discovered as a result of an Apache Struts vulnerability that hackers completely exploited. The consequences were so severe that the company’s top shareholders and management were obliged to sell their stock quickly in order to avoid the crisis.

5. Online dating app Tinder was also a victim (2015)

This online dating app was hacked over the internet in 2015 with the intention of collecting all of its customers’ information. The genuine name, date of birth, postal code, IP address, and even sexual preferences of 4 million users have been made public on a forum accessible via the Tor browser.

But Tinder has not yet come to its senses; in 2016, it experienced greater losses, and the effects were 100 times worse this time. 400 million accounts have had sensitive information stolen, and 20 years of data from the massive dating service is now publicly available online. The Local File Inclusion approach (an attack technique for transferring a local file straight to the hacker’s internet resource repository) was utilized by the hackers.

6. Hotel Marriott customers’ information was exposed

This internet attack was carried out by hackers who targeted a database of up to 500 million Starwood hotel guests (including bank accounts) owned by Marriott. The security flaw has existed since 2014, however, the vulnerability just became apparent in September 2018. Marriott was only involved in the largest security litigation ever once.

The number of online attacks continues to climb year after year, necessitating the development of a well-defended, comprehensive network security system for information security. VSEC, Vietnam Network Security Joint Stock Company, provides the most cost-effective security solutions for organizations in information security evaluation, monitoring, warning, and troubleshooting.