To understand the importance of cyber security, everyone should know which ones are the biggest hacks of all time.
Human life is getting more and more dependent on technology. In our day-to-day activities, we are continuously connected to the internet and we share a lot of confidential and/or personal information over the internet. This means protection of internet data or cyber security is a major concern for people. Any computer and network can get hacked into by unauthorized people if the security is weak or has loopholes. Hackers utilize the weaknesses in the system and gain control over that device and then all the information is at the mercy of those hackers.
The major hacking incidents are all targeted toward either commercial or government entities. Government agencies maintain a lot of data on the citizens and if the firewall or protection is weak, all those information can be in the hands of the hackers. Operation Shady Rat of 2006 and US Department of Defense hack in 1999 are examples of such attacks. In both incidents, the hackers got away with personal information and project details of classified activities. In the commercial sector, Spamhaus, an organization working to reduce spamming, fell victim to the biggest DDOS attack of the internet history and it crippled Spamhaus’ operations. The Playstation network hack of 2011 exposed personal information of around 77 million account holders. More than 12 million of them even had their credit card information exposed. But the biggest hacks were done by Albert Gonzales, who stole almost 150 million credit card information through multiple hacking attempts.
To know more about these incidents, you can take a look at Insider Monkey’s compilation of 7 Biggest Hacks of All Time.
