Biggest cyber-attacks of 2017

While counting the last days of 2017, it is also important to observe the most intimidating incidents of the year. Security researchers emphasize that cyber-security received more coverage worldwide than ever, with news reporters constantly having to inform audiences about global cyber-attacks.

Of course, the hot topic of the year was definitely ransomware infections that have cost 5 billion dollars in damages for various businesses. According to researchers, there had been an increase of 328% in attacks against endpoints. Let’s observe a short summary of the wake-up calls, attacks and breaches of 2017.

WannaCry

WannaCry ransomware infection was one of the first crypto-malware variants to hit the world so hard. The infection ranged in over 150 countries and infected thousands of personal and business computers. More than 300,000 attacked devices belonged to healthcare centers and car companies. Once again, this attack was possible due to the fact that many surfers are still using outdated versions of operating systems and programs. The lesson to be learned from this is to always update your device (when it is possible).

NotPetya

NotPetya crypto-malware also managed to cause a lot of damage to the world. It mostly focused on Ukrainian businesses by using vulnerable tax software. Even though the main target was Ukraine, the rest of the world certainly got a taste of NotPetya virus. The infection spread among Russian and Danish businesses. Because of this attack, many companies had to stop their activity for a while and, of course, there had been massive financial losses.

Bad Rabbit

Bad Rabbit ransomware is the most recent infection as it stormed last October. This specific malware infiltrated into operating systems together with an update for Adobe Flash Player. This trick is as old as time itself, and still, surfers are still successfully falling for it. Therefore, even though the previous global attacks were devastating, people are not eager to adjust to the newer and safer browsing strategies. Bad Rabbit virus infected such countries like Ukraine and Turkey.

Breaches of 2017

While ransomware attacks did prevail in 2017, we should not forget the massive data leakages. The most recently-discussed breach occurred in one of the units of Paypal: TIO Networks. Similar incidents occurred in Uber. However, Uber even paid hackers to conceal the data leakage, but in the end, ruined its reputation by attempting to hide the security breach. It was not the best year for Forever21 clothing company, but one of the most disturbing stories of breaches involved none other but Equifax. Equifax is a US-based credit reporting company and the aftermath its hack was not pretty. The company itself did not manage the exposure of its clients’ information. In addition to this, the numbers of endangered clients is massive: 143 million.

Android devices are attacked more often

If you are using Android, you should a couple of articles we write about the dangers of this operating system. It is not that Androids are malicious themselves; it is just that hackers are targeting those mobile phones more and more frequently. It is not too long ago that a widely-used Android apps secretly stole passwords, or an Android flaw allowed injection of malicious apps. Of course, Google consistently tries to clean up these messes, but thousands people are still risking their privacy by downloading apps from Google Play Store.