Hacking in the Headlines

HACKING in the HEADLINES Black- and grey-hat hackers are a huge threat to businesses and individuals worldwide. These cyber criminals can shut down your website with DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks, render your computers unusable, and steal data from hard drives or servers. WHAT IS HACKING? 0p00000 Black-hat hackers exploit computer systems' weaknesses in order to gain unauthorised access to data. They may use this information to commit fraud, or sell it to unscrupulous third parties. Some deface websites in protest, or simply to showcase their hacking skills in the online community. White-hat hackers non-maliciously attack Grey-hat hackers are considered a information systems to identify vulnerabilities and mix of the two. They often attack advise how cy ber security could be improved. websites for political reasons. HACKING WORLDWIDE Cybercrime is estimated to cost 42.8 MILLION the global economy over $400 BILLION cyber-attacks worldwide in 2013 (117,339 per day) (-£250 billion) annually £27 BILLION annually Cybercrime is estimated to cost the UK economy LARGE UK ORGANISATIONS 81% 55% 73 % 38 % of large UK organisations were attacked by ex perienced were hit by a DDOS attack had a cy ber-security breach in 2014 an unauthorised a malicious outsider software infec tion SMALL UK BUSINESSES 60 % 33 % 45 % 16 % of small UK businesses were attacked by ex perienced were hit by a had a cy ber-security an unauthorised a malicious DDOS attack breach in 2014 outsider software Infec tion HIGH - PROFILE HACKERS ANONYMOUS Anonymous is an anti-authoritarian 'hacktivist' group that protests against organisations via cyber-attacks. They deface sites and leak sensitive information or threaten to if their demands are not met. One of the biggest cases was Operation Pay back, a series of DDOS attacks on anti-piracy organisations Members, or Anons, involved in the shutdown of torrent sites. It also targeted wear sty lised Guy Fawkes masks at banks that withdrew financial services from WikiLeaks. public protests. Pay Pal lost £3.5 million as a result of the attacks. KEVIN MITNICK Once labelled the FBI's most-wanted hacker, Kevin Mitnick was a fugitive for three years and served five years in prison. Using the art of human manipulation not technological tools to gain access to data, he describes his activities as social engineering rather than hacking. JONATHAN JAMES The first juvenile to be imprisoned for cybercrime in the USA, Jonathan James (aka comrade) hacked NASA at the age of 15, downloading software that controlled living conditions on the International Space Station. The agency was forced to shut its computer systems down for 21 days, at a cost of approx imately $41,000. MICHAEL CALCE Another 15-year-old who caused havoc with hacking is Michael Calce, aka Mafiaboy. In 2000, he launched DDOS attacks on Amazon, eBay, CNN and more, causing $1.2 billion in damages. The teenager was convicted on 56 charges and spent eight months in open custody. ALBERT GONZALEZ Albert Gonzalez, aka Soupnazi, stole more than 170 million credit and debit card details by hacking retailers like T.J.Maxx, Barnes & Noble, and 7-Eleven. He would program blank cards with this information and empty ATMS - and victims' bank accounts. Prosecutors said that Gonzalez caused $200 million in damages. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2010. FAMOUS HACKING SCANDALS ADOBE In October 2013, Adobe announced that customer IDs, Adobe encrypted passwords, customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, ex piration dates, and other information relating to customer orders had TOP 5 BREACHED ADOBE PASSWORDS been compromised following a cyber-attack. Adobe originally suggested that 2.9 million users had 1. 123456 Enter been affected, but this figure was later revised to 38 million. In November, LastPass said it had discovered 2. 123456789 Enter a data dump containing 150 million breached records. 3. password Enter Stricture Consulting Group was able to decrypt the 4. adobe123 Enter leaked data and reveal the top 100 passwords 5. 12345678 Enter used by Adobe customers. SIBERIAN PIPELINE SABOTAGE When a KGB insider warned the ClIA that the Soviets O oo were planning to steal software, the agency planted a logic bomb - a malicious piece of code specifically designed to sabotage unauthorised users. The stolen program was used to control the Trans-Siberian pipeline, and triggered an explosion in 1982. This disrupted the Soviet's plans to import natural gas to Western Europe and damaged the Russian economy, benefitting the Western Bloc's stance in the Cold War. EBAY An eBay database containing users' names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth was accessed between late February and early March 2014. In May, eBay asked 145 million customers to reset their passwords. SONY PLAYSTATIO NETWORK On April 16th/17th 2011, hackers stole Sony Online Entertainment records featuring users' names, addresses, email addresses, birth dates, genders, Later in May, the company phone numbers, login names and encrypted passwords. estimated that the hack cost Direct debit records containing the bank account ¥14 BILLION number, customer name, account name and address of 10,700 users in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands ($171 MILLION) and Spain were also compromised. Sony shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity on April 20th to begin But the expenses continued to rack up: the an investigation and implement new security measures. Information Commissioner's Office fined Sony Computer Entertainment Europe On May 1st, Sony announced that service restoration would begin that week. It also announced a Welcome Back £250,000 programme, which offered complimentary content and in January 2013, claiming that the service subscriptions in an attempt to appease breach "could have been prevented". 77 million affected customers. 2014 CELEBRITY PHOTO LEAK In August 2014, private photos of over 100 celebrities - many explicit - were posted to imageboard website 4chan. Two more batches of pictures were leaked in September, and another was released in October. The photos were obtained from Apple iCloud, an online storage and backup service, but Apple denied its security systems were to blame. The company stated that accounts were "compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions". However, Apple introduced login notifications and two-step verification to help improve security for iCloud users. SASSER WORM Microsoft When he was just 17 years old, Sven Jaschan created the Sasser worm. This malicious rewarded $250,000 program took advantage of a programming bug in Windows 2000 and XP, infecting and to the two tipsters who helped police paralysing computers worldwide from May arrest the worm author. Jaschan was 2004. The UK Maritime and Coastguard sentenced to 21 months on probation Agency, Australian rail network and Taiwan and 30 hours of community service. postal service were among the victims. -oo CITIGROUP By May 24th 2011, Citigroup discovered that 360,083 of its North American Citi card accounts had been hacked. The Wall Street Journal reported that approximately $2.7 million was stolen from around 3,400 credit-card holders. The bank reimbursed affected customers. 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