The largest in the history of a hacker attack. Photo

The Internet has penetrated all spheres of our life.

We store in the network, our digital fingerprint — and if you have the skills to them can access the other person. Our story — about the largest hacking attacks in history.

The teenager against the Ministry of defense

If anyone deserves the title of the real “Mr. Robot” (in honor of the genius hacker from the same series), this is Jonathan James. In 1999, he was able to remotely connect to one of the computers of the Ministry of defense and with the help of a program received access message, the real names of employees and their current passwords. Received James information, of course, was a secret, and dealt mainly with plans for the protection of States from potential threats. But perhaps most importantly — in his hands was even code life support systems of the astronauts on the International space station.

At the time of the first attack James was 16 years old. To go unpunished, he could not: he was caught in 2000 and, due to a minor, sentenced to house arrest and ban on the use of computers. But if Jonathan at the time of the breaking was over eighteen, he would have been about ten years in prison.

In 2008, James was found shot to death. The official version is suicide, but, of course, the network appeared the theory that the hacker has removed the American special services.
The largest DDOS attack in history

DDOS is a pretty common hacker attacks, the aim of which is to cripple the attacked object. The attacker, often from multiple systems, sends to the server huge amounts of data, which he obviously can not cope, because of what regular users have a huge problem with the connection. In the worst (for a hacker — best) case, the server just crashes, ie stops working.

Ironic that the largest DDOS attack in history has been the international organization Spamhaus, whose purpose is to prevent spam on the network: calculate spammers to generate black lists and sell them to holders of mail servers. In 2013, Spamhaus added to the blacklist Dutch provider CyberBunker — so any information from CyberBunker is automatically considered spam on all mail servers, to cooperate with Spamhaus.

A few days later suffered a catastrophic Spamhaus DDOS attack, which is an avalanche tumbled down the company’s servers: the volume of DDOS traffic reached astronomical 300 gigabits per second. And this despite the fact that already 50 Gigabit will be enough to bring down a fairly large server.

Spam filters have stopped working throughout Europe. It lasted more than a week, Spamhaus was even forced to seek help in Google. Accused in the incident in the end of hackers from Russia and Eastern Europe.

In 2013, CyberBunker founder was arrested in Spain on suspicion of involvement in the attack. Later he was released, the court’s decision is not yet announced.
Hackers against a cheater

Sometimes hackers can just steal your money or account from any of World of Warcraft. But to destroy the family.

That is what happened with many users dubious website Ashley Madison. Its target audience — married men and married women seeking affair on the side. Online resource for those who are going to change.

For a long time the worst that’s ever happened to Ashley Madison, had a public reprimand. However, in July 2015, a group of hackers The Impact Team said that they managed to access database of all clients of the service, i.e. names, postal addresses, credit card numbers, payment history… Hackers have put forward a simple demand: Ashley Madison must immediately terminate its existence, or all information will be posted online for public access.

Five days later, representatives of the service reported that a loophole in security was eliminated, and burglary connected the power structure of the United States. To close the site they were planning, putting on what hackers are bluffing. In vain — without waiting for compliance, The Impact Team relentlessly posted all that so carefully concealed the visitors. Was even compiled a handy database where anyone could drive interested in his name and see if it is in the database. It was possible to know whether the changes you husband and wife, “check for lice” best friend or boss.

The consequences were catastrophic: August 24, Toronto police reported two cases of suicide associated with breaking Ashley Madison. Ruined families, broken marriages, and the world is still arguing who was to blame.

Bitcoins worth half a billion

Bitcoin is a crypto — currency, which many economists call the currency of the future. When bitcoin transactions don’t need intermediaries, your savings may not burn, they cannot be frozen and almost impossible to track.

Now bitcoin can easily be exchanged for the same dollars, so it is not surprising that hackers this topic Oh how interesting.

7 Feb 2014 the world’s largest exchange of bitcoins Mt.Gox has discovered a vulnerability in the system and said that within three to four years, the hackers stole users ‘ bitcoins in the total amount of half a billion dollars. Since all of the stolen funds were transferred to the same account, there is a high probability that the attacker acted alone.

At the end of the story is sad: Mt.Gox suffered significant financial and reputational losses and went bankrupt. The hacker is not found and, given the nature of bitcoin as a currency and its status of half a billion dollars, hardly ever will find.
Yahoo

The consequences of this hacking not too serious, but to mention it is for several reasons. First, was attacked by Yahoo, one of the largest IT companies. Second, the extent of stolen data is staggering.

In 2014, servers Yahoo has flowed more than half a billion (according to some estimates, a billion) data on the accounts of the company services. The details of the burglary was published only two years later, in 2016. So if you was on Yahoo and, say, have him e-mail and hear about this story for the first time, it’s time to change your password.

Although, according to the employees of Yahoo in the hands of hackers in the worst case, were only the real names, phone numbers and dates of birth of users, but not credit card numbers. In addition, passwords for the company servers are stored encrypted. But who knows for sure?

© 2017, paradox. All rights reserved.