2016 was a disastrous year for corporate and governments in terms of hacking incidents and attempts. There was a phenomenal increase in company breaches and as to top it all, the presidential election brought forth a wave of online attacks that were previously unheard of.
The string of internet-related hacking attempts was more than predicted, yet it took cyber security experts by surprise. The one thing common between various attacks was the fact that each hack evolved to be more than what experts had initially thought about them.
2016 saw more cyber attacks than ever before and here's our roundup of them:
Yahoo
If we talk about the biggest hack of 2016, it undoubtedly has to be Yahoo. However, Yahoo's data was hacked back in 2013 but the sheer magnitude of this hack was disclosed in December 2016. The size of the hack impacted a staggering one billion Yahoo accounts.
What's surprising is that Yahoo is still unclear as to who hacked these accounts and compromised private data like email addresses, names, contact details, date of birth, passwords, credit card details, and bank information to name a few. In response to new findings, Yahoo is closely working with law enforcement agencies to investigate the massive breach.
Learn how to boost your Yahoo security.
Democratic National Committee (DNC)
It's no doubt that Yahoo's hack was a big one, but the alleged Russia's hack of many Democratic Party agreements had the greatest impact of any breach in 2016. This can be attributed due to the election year as well.
Due to numerous leaks of confidential information regarding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, innumerable diversions were caused during the election 2016, which sparked controversies across the nation and put question marks on the entire process of the election, raising concerns as to whether the elections were rigged.
LinkedIn, Tumblr & MySpace
LinkedIn too got a taste of hackers in June 2012. Corresponding to latest revelations, cybercriminals stole 6.5 million user accounts. On May 2016, it was uncovered that an additional 100 million LinkedIn email accounts and passwords were widely available online.
MySpace used to be the world's biggest social network. In 2016, MySpace was hacked, resulting in 427 million user accounts being compromised. Although the company did not have more than 50 million users on a monthly basis, those who had an old account were also hacked.
The hacked credentials were then used to take over accounts of prominent personalities including celebrities and CEOs.
Weebly
Weebly is a web-hosting service that admitted it “left the door open for hackers.” The web-hosting service put 43 million customers at risk due to their sloppy security system, which allowed easy access to usernames, email addresses, passwords and even the users’ IP address.
Ashley Madison & Friend Finder
It was far-fetched that dating sites could be subject to a hack let alone a massive hack that went on to reveal a staggering 412 million user accounts on the website, Friend Finder and 32 million user accounts of Ashley Madison were hacked in 2016.
When we talk about a hack, we typically assume the accounts that were affected. However, in the case of Friend Finder, accounts that were made and deleted were also subject to the hack. All the data given to the website including names, passwords, email addresses, profile pictures, etc. were also hacked.
Besides the above mentioned hacking incidents, the infamous hacker group Our Mine and Peace or Peace of Mind contributed significantly towards breaches in 2016, targeting influential CEOs to organizations.
PureVPN
November 24, 2022
4 years ago
