List of security hacking incidents

This is a list of security hacking incidents.
1970s
1971 -- a Vietnam War veteran named John Draper discovers that the give-away whistle in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes perfectly reproduces a 2600 hertz tone. Draper builds a "blue box" that, when used with the whistle and sounded into a phone receiver, allows phreaks to make free calls. Shortly afterwards, Esquire magazine publishes "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" with instructions for making a blue box, and wire fraud in the United States escalates.
1972 -- Abbie Hoffman helps found The Youth International Party Line newsletter. Hoffman's publishing partner, Al Bell, changed the YIPL newsletter's name to TAP, for Technical Assistance Program.
1972 -- The InterNetworking Working Group is founded to govern the standards of the developing network. Vinton Cerf is the chairman and is known as a "Father of the Internet."
1973 -- college kids Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer, begin making and selling blue boxes.
1978 -- First report of teen-age boys being kicked off the telephone system for pranks.
Bulletin boards - with names such as Sherwood Forest and Catch-22 - become the venue of choice for phreaks and hackers to gossip, trade tips, and share secret phone numbers computer passwords and even credit card numbers.
Susan Thunder is one of the early "phone phreakers," part of Kevin Mitnick's crew who break into phone lines.
1980s
1981 -- Chaos Computer Club forms in Germany.
1982 -- In Milwaukee a group of six teenagers hackers calling themselves the 414's (their area code) break into some 60 computer systems at institutions ranging from the Los Alamos Laboratories to Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center before being arrested.
1983 -- Movie WarGames introduces the wider public to the phenomenon of hacking.
1983 -- Secret Service gets jurisdiction over credit card and computer fraud.
1984
Someone calling himself Lex Luthor founds the Legion of Doom. Named after a Saturday morning cartoon, the LOD had the reputation of attracting "the best of the best" -- until one of the gang's brightest young acolytes, a kid named Phiber Optik, feuded with Legion of Doomer Erik Bloodaxe and got tossed out of the clubhouse. Phiber's friends formed a rival group, the Masters of Deception.
The Comprehensive Crime Control Act gives the Secret Service jurisdiction over computer fraud.
CULT OF THE DEAD COW forms in Lubbock, Texas and begins publishing its ezine.
The hacker magazine 2600 begins regular publication, right when TAP was putting out its final issue. The editor of 2600, "Emmanuel Goldstein" (whose real name is Eric Corley), takes his handle from the leader of the resistance in George Orwell's 1984. The publication provide tips for would-be hackers and phone phreaks, as well as commentary on the hacker issues of the day. Today, copies of 2600 are sold at most large retail bookstores.
The first Chaos Communication Congress, the annual european hacker conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club, is held in Hamburg
1985 -- The online 'zine Phrack is established.
1986 -- After more and more break-ins to government and corporate computers, Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to break into computer systems. The law, however, does not cover juveniles.
1987 -- Decoder magazine begins in Italy.
1987 -- The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is created to address network security.
1988
The Morris Worm: Robert T. Morris, Jr. (RTM), a graduate student at Cornell University and son of a chief scientist at a division of the National Security Agency, launches a self-replicating worm on the government's ARPAnet (precursor to the Internet) to test its effect on UNIX systems. The worm gets out of hand and spreads to some 6000 networked computers, clogging government and university systems. Morris is dismissed from Cornell, sentenced to three years' probation, and fined $10,000.
Kevin Mitnick secretly monitors the e-mail of MCI Communications and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) security officials. Kevin Mitnick is convicted of violating computer network of DEC and sentenced to a year in jail.
Kevin Poulsen -- was indicted on phone-tampering charges. Kevin went on the run and avoided capture for 17 months.
First National Bank of Chicago is the victim of $70-million computer theft.
1989
The Germans and the KGB: In the first cyberespionage case to make international headlines, hackers in West Germany (loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club) are arrested for breaking into U.S. government and corporate computers and selling operating-system source code to the Soviet KGB. Three of them are turned in by two fellow hacker spies, and a fourth suspected hacker commits suicide when his possible role in the plan is publicized. Because the information stolen is not classified, the hackers are fined and sentenced to probation. In a separate incident,
Arrest of a hacker who calls himself The Mentor. He publishes a now-famous treatise that comes to be known as the Hacker's Manifesto.
Fry Guy is raided by law enforcement; police hunt for Legion of Doom hackers.
Jude Milhon (aka St Jude) and R. U. Sirius launch Mondo 2000, a major '90s tech-lifestyle magazine, in Berkeley, California.
1990s
A woman who goes by the handle Natasha Grigori started out in the early starts running a bulletin-board system for software pirates. Now, at age "40-plus," she's the founder of antichildporn.org, a group of hackers who use their skills to track kiddie-porn distributors and pass the information on to law enforcement.
1990 -- Operation Sundevil introduced. After a prolonged sting investigation, Secret Service agents swoop down on organizers and prominent members of BBSs in 14 U.S. cities including the Legion of Doom, conducting early-morning raids and arrests. The arrests involve and are aimed at cracking down on credit-card theft and telephone and wire fraud. The result is a breakdown in the hacking community, with members informing on each other in exchange for immunity. The offices of Steve Jackson Games are also raided, and the role-playing sourcebook GURPS Cyberpunk is confiscated, possibly because the government fears it is a "handbook for computer crime". Legal battles arise that prompt the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
1990 -- LOD and MOD engaged in almost two years of online warfare -- jamming phone lines, monitoring calls, trespassing in each other's private computers. Then the Feds cracked down. For Phiber and friends, that meant jail.
1991
Rumors circulate about the "Michelangelo" virus, expected to crash computers on March 6, 1992, the artist's 517th birthday. Doomsday passes without incident.
Kevin Poulsen is captured and indicted for stealing military documents.
resulted in jail sentences for four members of the Masters of Deception. Phiber Optik spent a year in federal prison.
1992 -- Release of the movie Sneakers, in which security experts are blackmailed into stealing a universal decoder for encryption systems.
1992 -- Hackers break into GAFB, NASA and KARI.
1993
During radio station call-in contests, hacker-fugitive Kevin Poulsen and two friends rig the stations' phone systems to let only their calls through, and "win" two Porsches, vacation trips, and $20,000. Poulsen, already wanted for breaking into phone-company systems, serves five years in prison for computer and wire fraud.
Texas A&M University professor receives death threats because a hacker used his computer to send 20,000 racist e-mails.
The first DEF CON hacking conference takes place in Las Vegas. The conference is meant to be a one-time party to say good-bye to BBSs (now replaced by the Web), but the gathering is so popular it becomes an annual event.
1994 summer -- Russian crackers siphon $10 million from Citibank and transfer the money to bank accounts around the world. Vladimir Levin, the 30-year-old ringleader, uses his work laptop after hours to transfer the funds to accounts in Finland and Israel. Levin stands trial in the United States and is sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recover all but $400,000 of the stolen money.
1994 -- Hackers adapt to emergence of the World Wide Web quickly, moving all their how-to information and hacking programs from the old BBSs to new hacker Web sites.
1995
February: Kevin Mitnick was arrested again. This time the FBI accused him of stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. Kevin Mitnick is incarcerated on charges of "wire fraud and illegal possession of computer files stolen from such companies as Motorola and Sun Microsystems" He is held in prison for four years without a trial.
The movies The Net and Hackers are released.
United States Department of Defense computers sustained 250,000 attacks by hackers.
Hackers deface federal web sites.
AOL gives its users access to USENET, precipitating Eternal September.
1996
Kevin Poulsen is cleared of the military hacking charges and released. He starts a career as a freelance journalist.
Hackers alter Web sites of the United States Department of Justice (August), the CIA (October), and the U.S. Air Force (December).
Canadian hacker group, Brotherhood, breaks into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The U.S. General Accounting Office reports that hackers attempted to break into Defense Department computer files some 250,000 times in 1995 alone. About 65 percent of the attempts were successful, according to the report.
The MP3 format gains popularity in the hacker world. Many hackers begin setting up sharing sites via FTP, Hotline, IRC and USEnet.
1997
AOHell is released, a freeware application that allows a burgeoning community of unskilled script kiddies to wreak havoc on America Online. For days, hundreds of thousands of AOL users find their mailboxes flooded with multi-megabyte mail bombs and their chat rooms disrupted with spam messages.
A 15-year-old Croatian youth penetrates computers at a U.S. Air Force base in Guam.
December: Information Security publishes first issue.
Hackers get into Microsoft's Windows NT operating system.
1998
January: Yahoo! notifies Internet users that anyone visiting its site in recent weeks might have downloaded a logic bomb and worm planted by hackers claiming a "logic bomb" will go off if Mitnick is not released from prison.
January: Anti-hacker runs during Super Bowl XXXII
February: The Internet Software Consortium proposes the use of DNSSEC--domain-name system security extensions--to secure DNS servers.
During heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, hackers touch off a string of break-ins Solar Sunrise, a series of attacks targeting unclassified Pentagon computers and steal software programs, leads to the establishment of round-the-clock, online guard duty at major military computer sites. Then-U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls it "the most organized and systematic attack" on U.S. military systems to date. An investigation points to two American teens. A 19-year-old Israeli hacker who calls himself The Analyzer (aka Ehud Tenebaum) is eventually identified as their ringleader and arrested. Tenebaum is later made chief technology officer of a computer consulting firm.
March: Timothy Lloyd is indicted for planting a logic bomb on the network of Omega Engineering. The logic bomb causes millions in damage.
Hackers alter The New York Times Web site, renaming it HFG (Hacking for Girlies). The hackers express anger at the arrest and imprisonment of Kevin Mitnick, the subject of the book "Takedown" co-authored by Times reporter John Markoff.
Two hackers are sentenced to death by a court in China for breaking into a bank computer network and stealing 260,000 yuan ($31,400).
June: Information Security publishes its first annual Industry Survey, finding that nearly three-quarters of organizations suffered a security incident in the previous year.
July: Hackers break into United Nations Children Fund Web site threathening "holocaust."
August: The hacking group CULT OF THE DEAD COW releases its Trojan horse program, Back Orifice at DEF CON. Once a user installs the Trojan horse on a machine running Windows 95 or Windows 98, the program allows unauthorized remote access of the machine.
October: "U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno announces National Infrastructure Protection Center."
December: L0pht testifies to the senate that it could shut down nationwide access to the Internet in less than 30 minutes.
1999
Software Security Goes Mainstream In the wake of Microsoft's Windows 98 release, 1999 becomes a banner year for security (and hacking). Hundreds of advisories and patches are released in response to newfound (and widely publicized) bugs in Windows and other commercial software products. A host of security software vendors release anti-hacking products for use on home computers.
The Electronic Civil Disobedience project, an online political performance-art group, attacks the Pentagon calling it conceptual art. It said it was protesting U.S. support of the Mexican suppression of rebels in southern Mexico. Carmin Karasic, helped write FloodNet, the tool used by ECD to bombard its opponents with access requests in a symbolic, harmless version of the denial-of-service attacks that took down CNN and Yahoo.
Classified computer systems at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, come under attack from a number of locations around the world, but the attacks were detected and stopped by newly developed Defense Department systems.
U.S. Information Agency Web site is hacked for the second time in six months. The hacker circumvented the agency's Internet security and damaged the hard drive, leaving behind the message "Crystal, I love you" and the signature "Zyklon."
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, says Defense Department computers are under a "coordinated, organized" attack from hackers. "You can basically say we are at war," he said.
U.S. President Bill Clinton announces a $1.46 billion initiative to improve government computer security. The plan would establish a network of intrusion detection monitors for certain federal agencies and encourage the private sector to do the same.
Kevin Mitnick, detained since 1995 on charges of computer fraud, signs plea agreement.
March: The Melissa worm is released and quickly becomes the most costly malware outbreak to date.
April: The U.S. Justice Department declines to prosecute former CIA Director John Deutch for keeping 31 secret files on his home computer after he left office in 1996.
July: CULT OF THE DEAD COW releases Back Orifice 2000 at DEF CON
September: Level Seven hacks The US Embassy in China's Website and places racist, anti-government slogans on embassy site in regards to 1998 U.S. embassy bombings
October: American Express introduces the "Blue" smart card, the industry's first chip-based credit card in the US.
"Unidentified hackers seized control of a British military communication satellite and demanded money in return for control of the satellite.
December: David L. Smith pleads guilty to creating and releasing the Melissa virus. It's one of the first times a person is prosecuted for writing a virus.
December 29: the Legions of the Underground (LoU) declared cyberwar on Iraq and China with the intention of disrupting and disabling internet infrastructure.
2000s
2000
January 7: an international coalition of hackers (including CULT OF THE DEAD COW, 2600 's staff, Phrack'''s staff, L0pht, and the Chaos Computer Club) issued a joint statement () condemning the LoU's declaration of war. The LoU responded by withdrawing its declaration.
January -- A Russian cracker attempts to extort $100,000 from online music retailer CD Universe, threatening to expose thousands of customers' credit card numbers. Posting them on a website after the attempt to extort money from the company failed. Barry Schlossberg (AKA Lou Cipher) is successful at extoring 1.4M from CD Universe for "services rendered", in an attempt to "catch the russian hacker".
Second week of February -- Canadian hacker MafiaBoy In the first and one of the biggest denial-of-service attacks to date, launches successful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack taking down several high-profile Web sites, including Amazon, CNN and Yahoo!.
Activists in Pakistan and the Middle East deface Web sites belonging to the Indian and Israeli governments to protest oppression in Kashmir and Palestine.
Hackers break into Microsoft's corporate network and access source code for the latest versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software. It is later released to several filesharing networks. The Register splashes with the immortal (and suppositional) headline: 'M$ hacked! Russian Mafia swipes WinME source'.
The following sites were attacked by hackers using distributed denial of service: Yahoo!, eBay, CNN.com, Amazon.com, Buy.com, ZDNet, E*Trade, and Datek.
March -- President Clinton says he doesn't use e-mail to communicate with his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, at college because he doesn't think the medium is secure.
April -- The U.S. Department of Justice unveils a portal that notes the government's position on Internet security and privacy issues, tracks prosecution of cybercriminals and provides guidelines for cybercrime investigations.
May -- a new virus appeared that spread rapidly around the globe. The "I Love You" virus infected image and sound files and spread quickly by causing copies of itself to be sent to all individuals in an address book.
May -- The LoveLetter virus sweeps across the globe in hours, wreaking havoc on networks and causing millions in damage and lost productivity.
June -- President Clinton signs the "Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce" (E-Sign) into law, making digital signatures legally binding.
June -- The Honeynet Project, led by Lance Spitzner, launches, collecting hacking intelligence through a network of decoy servers.
July -- The SANS Institute releases its first "Top 10 Vulnerabilities" list, denoting the most prevalent problems exploited by hackers.
Jennifer Grannick is an in-demand lawyer who explains hackers' rights to them at conventions.
A 19-year-old Midwestern law student who calls herself ViXen900 is a member of the HNC hackers' group and advises them on legal issues.
Kevin Mitnick is released from prison.
2006
January: One of the few worms to take after the old form of malware, destruction of data rather than the accumulation of zombie networks to launch attacks from, is discovered. It had various names, including Kama Sutra (used by most media reports), Black Worm, Mywife, Blackmal, Nyxem version D, Kapser, KillAV, Grew and CME-24. The worm would spread through e-mail client address books, and would search for documents and fill them with garbage, instead of deleting them to confuse the user. It would also hit a web page counter when it took control, allowing the programmer who created it as well as the world to track the progress of the worm. It would replace documents with random garbage on the third of every month. It was hyped by the media but actually affected relatively few computers, and was not a real threat for most users.
February: Direct-to-video film The Net 2.0 is released, as a sequel to The Net, following the same plotline, but with updated technology used in the film, using different characters, and different complications. The director of The Net 2.0, Charles Winkler, is son of Irwin Winkler, the director of The Net.
May: Jeanson James Ancheta receives a 57 month prison sentence, and is ordered to pay damages amounting to $15,000.00 to the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake and the Defense Information Systems Agency, for damage done due to DDoS attacks and hacking. Ancheta also had to forfeit his gains to the government, which include $60,000 in cash, a BMW, and computer equipment .
May: Largest Defacement in Web History is performed by the Turkish hacker iSKORPiTX who successfully hacked 21,549 websites in one shot.
July: Robert Moore and Edwin Pena featured on Americas Most Wanted with Kevin Mitnick presenting their case commit the first VOIP crime ever seen in the USA. Robert Moore served 2 years in federal prison with a $152,000.00 restitution while Edwin Pena was sentenced to 10 years and a $1 million restitution.
September: Viodentia releases FairUse4WM tool which would remove DRM information off WMA music downloaded from music services such as Yahoo Unlimited, Napster, Rhapsody Music and Urge.
2007
May 17: Estonia recovers from massive denial-of-service attack
June 13: FBI Operation Bot Roast finds over 1 million botnet victims
June 21: A spear phishing incident at the Office of the Secretary of Defense steals sensitive U.S. defense information, leading to significant changes in identity and message-source verification at OSD.
August 11: United Nations website hacked by Turkish Hacker Kerem125
October 7: Trend Micro website successfully hacked by Turkish hacker Janizary(a.k.a Utku)
November 29: FBI Operation Bot Roast II: 1 million infected PCs, $20 million in losses and 8 indictments
2008
January 18: Project Chanology Anonymous attacks Scientology website servers around the world. Private documents are stolen from Scientology computers and distributed over the Internet
March 7: Around 20 Chinese hackers claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including The Pentagon. They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island.
2009
April 1: Conficker worm infiltrated millions of PCs worldwide including many government-level top-security computer networks
2001
Microsoft becomes the prominent victim of a new type of crack that attacks the domain name server. In these denial-of-service attacks, the DNS paths that take users to Microsoft's Web sites are corrupted. The hack is detected within a few hours, but prevents millions of users from reaching Microsoft Web pages for two days.
February -- A Dutch cracker releases the Anna Kournikova virus, initiating a wave of viruses that tempts users to open the infected attachment by promising a sexy picture of the Russian tennis star.
March -- FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen is charged with using his computer skills and FBI access to spy for the Russians.
March -- The L10n worm is discovered in the wild attacking older versions of BIND DNS.
April -- FBI agents trick two Russian crackers into coming to the U.S. and revealing how they were cracking U.S. banks.
May
Spurred by elevated tensions in Sino-American diplomatic relations, U.S. and Chinese hackers engage in skirmishes of Web defacements that many dub "The Sixth Cyberwar".
Crackers begin using "pulsing" zombies, a new DDoS method that has zombie machines send random pings to targets rather than flooding them, making it hard to stop attacks.
AV experts identify Sadmind, a new cross-platform worm that uses compromised Sun Solaris boxes to attack Windows NT servers.
July -- Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov is arrested at the annual Def Con hacker convention. He is the first person criminally charged with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
August -- Code Red, the first polymorphic worm, infects tens of thousands of machines.
September -- The World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks spark lawmakers to pass a barrage of anti terrorism laws many of which group Hackers as terrorists and remove many long standing personal freedoms in the name of safety.
September -- Nimda, a new memory-only worm, wreaks havoc on the Internet, quickly eclipsing Code Red's infection rate and recovery cost.
November -- Microsoft and its allies vow to end "full disclosure" of security vulnerabilities by replacing it with "responsible" disclosure guidelines.
November -- The European Union adopts the controversial cybercrime treaty, which makes the possession and use of hacking tools illegal.
l/skl
2002
January -- Bill Gates decrees that Microsoft will secure its products and services, and kicks off a massive internal training and quality control campaign.
February -- As part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft shuts down all Windows development, sending more than 8,000 programmers to security training.
April -- The U.S. Army initiates the "Mannheim Project," an effort to better consolidate and secure the military's IT assets from cyber-warfare.
May -- Klez.H, a variant of the worm discovered in November 2001, becomes the biggest malware outbreak in terms of machines infected, but causes little monetary damage.
June -- The Bush administration files a bill to create the Department of Homeland Security, which, among other things, will be responsible for protecting the nation's critical IT infrastructure.
July -- An Information Security survey finds that most security practitioners favor full disclosure because it helps them defend against hacker exploits and puts pressure of software vendors to improve their products.
August -- Researcher Chris Paget publishes "shatter attacks," detailing how Windows' unauthenticated messaging system can be used to take over a machine. The paper raises questions about how securable Windows could ever be.
September -- The White House's Office of Homeland Security releases a draft of the "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," which many criticize as being too weak.
October -- The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium--(ISC)2--confers its 10,000th CISSP certification.
2003
January 23 -- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Man Convicted of Hacking a Judge's Personal E-Mail Account
February 6 -- Former Employee of Viewsonic Arrested on Charges of Hacking into Company's Computer, Destroying Data.
February 13 -- Ohio Man Attacked NASA Computer System Shutting Down Email Server.
February 20 -- Ex-employee of Airport Transportation Company Arrested for Allegedly Hacking Into Computer, Destroying Data.
February 26 -- U.S. Convicts Kazakhstan Cracker of Breaking into Bloomberg L.P.'s Computers and Attempting Extortion
February 26 -- Former Employee of American Eagle Outfitters Indicted on Charges of Password Trafficking and Computer Damage.
February 28 -- Los Angeles, California Man Sentenced to Prison for Role in International Computer Hacking and Internet Fraud Scheme.
March -- CULT OF THE DEAD COW and Hacktivismo are given permission by the United States Department of Commerce to export software utilizing strong encryption
March 10 -- California Woman Convicted for Unauthorized Computer Access to Customer Account Information in Credit Union Fraud Prosecution.
March 13 -- Computer Cracker Ples Guilty to Computer Intrusion and Credit Card Fraud.
March 13 -- St. Joseph, Missouri Man Pleas Guilty in District's First Computer Cracking Conviction.
March 14 -- Student Charged with Unauthorized Access to University of Texas Computer System.
April 2 -- San Jose, California Man Indicted for Theft of Trade Secrets and Computer Fraud.
April 18 -- Ex-employee of Airport Transportation Company Guilty of Hacking into Company's Computer.
May 12 -- Three Californians Indicted in Conspiracy to Commit Bank fraud and Identity Theft.
June 12 -- Computer Hacker Sentenced to One Year and One Day And Ordered to Pay More than $88,000 Restitution For Series of Computer Intrusions and Credit Card Fraud.
June 12 -- Southern California Man Who Hijacked Al Jazeera Website Agrees to Plead Guilty to Federal Charges.
July 1 -- Kazakhstan Hacker Sentenced to Four Years Prison for Breaking into Bloomberg Systems and Attempting Extortion
July 11 -- Queens, New York Man Pleads to Federal Charges of Computer Damage, Access Device Fraud and Software Piracy
July 17 -- FBI Employee Arrested and Charged in Three Federal indictments
July 25 -- Russian Man Sentenced for Cracking into Computers in the United States
August 23 -- Jesus Oquendo "sil" of AntiOffline releases "BRAT " Border Router Attack Tool as part of "Theories in Denials of Service in an effort to make administrators aware of the possibility of a worm attack tool capable of breaking backbone routes on the Internet
August 25 -- Former Computer Technician in Douglasville, Georgia Arrested for Hacking into Government Computer Systems in Southern California
August 29 -- Minneapolis, Minnesota 18 year old Arrested for Developing and Releasing B Variant of Blaster Computer Worm.
September 9 -- U.S. Charges Cracker with Illegally Accessing New York Times Computer Network.
September 10 -- Deputy Assistant Attorney General John G. Malcolm's Testimony before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census.
September 26 -- Juvenile Arrested for Releasing Variant of Blaster Computer Worm That Attacked Microsoft.
September 29 -- President of San Diego Computer Security Company Indicted in Conspiracy to Gain Unauthorized Access into Government Computers.
October 6 -- Former Employee of Viewsonic Pleas Guilty to Hacking into Company's Computer, Destroying Data
October 7 -- Disgruntled Philadelphia Phillies Fan Charged with Hacking into Computers Triggering spam E-mail Attacks.
November 5 -- Dallas, Texas FBI Employee Indicted for Public corruption.
November 20 -- Three Men Indicted for Hacking into Lowe's Companies' Computers with Intent to Steal Credit Card Information.
November 20 -- Two Alleged Computer Hackers Charged in Los Angeles as Part of Nationwide 'Operation Cyber Sweep'.
December 5 -- Former Hellmann Logistics Computer Programmer Sentenced for Unauthorized Computer Intrusion.
December 18 -- Milford Man pleas guilty to hacking.
2004
March - Myron Tereshchuk arrested for attempting to extort $17 million from Micropatent. FBI agents find explosives and biological weapons in the course of the raid.
December -- Brian Salcedo sentenced to 9 years in prison for his involvement in hacking into the corporate systems of Lowe's home improvement stores and attempting to steal customer credit card information. The sentence far exceeds the 5 1/2 years that hacker Kevin Mitnick spent behind bars. Prosecutors said the three men tapped into the wireless network of a Lowe's store in Southfield, Mich., used that connection to enter the chain's central computer system in North Wilkesboro, N.C., and installed a program to capture credit card information. No data was actually collected however.
July 13 - Informationleak.com is born and encompasses the ideals held by many of the groups from the so called golden age of hacking.
2005
September 15 - An unnamed teenager is sentenced to 11 months for gaining access to T-Mobile USA's network and exploiting Paris Hilton's sidekick, it turns out this teen is also responsable for breaking in to data broker LexisNexus's system in January.
November 4 - Jeanson James Ancheta, who prosecutors say was a member of the "Botmaster Underground", a group of script kiddies who are mostly noted for their excessive use of bot attacks and propogating vast amounts of spam on the internet, was taken into custody after being lured to FBI offices in Los Angeles.
2010s
2010
January 12: Operation Aurora Google publicly reveals that it has been on the receiving end of a "highly sophisticted and targetted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google" June: Stuxnet The Stuxnet worm is found by VirusBlokAda. Stuxnet affects Windows computers throughout the world. Later, it is learned that Stuxnet can also affect some Unix systems.
2011
The hacker group Lulz Security is formed.
April 9: Bank of America website got hacked by a Turkish hacker named JeOPaRDY. An estimated 85,000 credit card numbers and accounts were reported to have been stolen due to the hack. Bank officials say no personal customer bank information is available on that web-page. Investigations are being conducted by the FBI to trace down the incriminated hacker.
April 17: An "external intrusion" sends the PlayStation Network offline, and compromises personally identifying information (possibly including credit card details) of its 77 million accounts, in what is claimed to be one of the five largest data breaches ever.
Computer hacker sl1nk releases information of his penetration in the servers of the Department of Defense (DoD), Pentagon, NASA, NSA, US Military, Department of the Navy, Space and Naval Warfare System Command and other UK/US government websites.
September: Bangladeshi hacker TiGER-M@TE made a world record in defacement history by hacking 700,000 websites in a single shot.
October 16: The YouTube channel of Sesame Street was hacked, streaming pornographic content for about 22 minutes.
November 1: The main phone and Internet networks of the Palestinian territories sustained a hacker attack from multiple locations worldwide.
November 7: The forums for Valve's Steam service were hacked. Redirects for a hacking website, Fkn0wned, appeared on the Steam users' forums, offering "hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more."
December 14: Five members of the Norwegian hacker group, Noria, were arrested, allegedly suspected for hacking into the email account of the militant extremist Anders Behring Breivik (who perpetrated the 2011 attacks in the country).
2012
A Saudi hacker, 0XOMAR, published over 400,000 credit cards online, and threatened Israel to release 1 million credit cards in the future. In response to that incident, an Israeli hacker published over 200 Saudi's credit cards online.
January 7: "Team Appunity", a group of Norwegian hackers, were arrested for breaking into Norway's largest prostitution website then publishing the user database online.
February 3: Marriott was hacked by a New Age ideologist, Attila Nemeth who was resisting against the New World Order where he said that corporations are allegedly controlling the world. As a response Marriott reported him to the United States Secret Service.
February 8: Foxconn is hacked by a hacker group, "Swagg Security", releasing a massive amount of data including email and server logins, and even more alarming - bank account credentials of large companies like Apple and Microsoft. Swagg Security stages the attack just as a Foxconn protest ignites against terrible working conditions in southern China.
May 24: WHMCS is hacked by UGNazi, they claim that the reason for this is because of the illegal sites that are using their software.
May 31: MyBB is hacked by newly founded hacker group, UGNazi, the website was defaced for about a day, they claim their reasoning for this was because they were upset that the forum board Hackforums.net uses their software.
June 5: The social networking website LinkedIn has been hacked and the passwords for nearly 6.5 million user accounts are stolen by cybercriminals. As a result, a United States grand jury indicted Nikulin and three unnamed co-conspirators on charges of aggravated identity theft and computer intrusion.
August 15: The most valuable company in the world Saudi Aramco is crippled by a cyber warfare attack for months by malware called Shamoon. Considered the biggest hack in history in terms of cost and destructiveness . Carried out by an Iranian attacker group called Cutting Sword of Justice. Iranian hackers retaliated against Stuxnet by releasing Shamoon. The malware destroyed over 35,000 Saudi Aramco computers, affecting business operations for months.
December 17: Computer hacker sl1nk announced that he has hacked a total of 9 countries' SCADA systems. The proof includes 6 countries: France, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
2013
The social networking website Tumblr is attacked by hackers. Consequently, 65,469,298 unique emails and passwords were leaked from Tumblr. The data breach's legitimacy is confirmed by computer security researcher Troy Hunt.
2014
February 7: The bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy after $460million was apparently stolen by hackers due to "weaknesses in [their] system" and another $27.4million went missing from its bank accounts.
October: The White House computer system was hacked. It was said that the FBI, the Secret Service, and other U.S. intelligence agencies categorized the attacks "among the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against U.S. government systems."
November 24: In response to the release of the film The Interview, the servers of Sony Pictures are hacked by a hacker group calling itself "Guardian of Peace".
November 28: The website of the Philippine telecommunications company Globe Telecom was hacked in response to the poor internet service they are distributing.
2015
June: the records of 21.5 million people, including social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, fingerprints, and security-clearance-related information, are stolen from the United States Office of Personnel Management. Most of the victims are employees of the United States government and unsuccessful applicants to it. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post report that government sources believe the hacker is the government of China.
July: The servers of extramaritial affairs website Ashley Madison were breached.
2016
February: The 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist attempted to steal US$951 million from a Bangladesh Bank, and succeeded in getting $101 million - although some of this was later recovered.
July 22: WikiLeaks published the documents from the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak.
July 29: a group suspected coming from China launched hacker attacks on the website of Vietnam Airlines.
August 13: The Shadow Brokers (TSB) started publishing several leaks containing hacking tools from the National Security Agency (NSA), including several zero-day exploits. Ongoing leaks until April 2017 (The Shadow Brokers)
September: Hacker Ardit Ferizi is sentenced to 20 years in prison after being arrested for hacking U.S. servers and passing the leaked information to members of ISIL terrorist group back in 2015.
October: The 2016 Dyn cyberattack is being conducted with a botnet consisting of IOTs infected with Mirai by the hacktivist groups SpainSquad, Anonymous, and New World Hackers, reportedly in retaliation for Ecuador's rescinding Internet access to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at their embassy in London, where he has been granted asylum.
Late 2016: Hackers steal international personal user data from the company Uber, including phone numbers, email addresses, and names, of 57 million people and 600,000 driver's license numbers of drivers for the company. Uber's GitHub account was accessed through Amazon's cloud-based service. Uber paid the hackers $100,000 for assurances the data was destroyed.
2017
February: The Cloudbleed bug was discovered by Google Project Zero team.
April: A hacker group calling itself "The Dark Overlord" posted unreleased episodes of Orange Is the New Black'' TV series online after failing to extort the online entertainment company Netflix.
May: WannaCry ransomware attack started on Friday, 12 May 2017, and has been described as unprecedented in scale, infecting more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries. A hacked unreleased Disney film is held for ransom, to be paid in Bitcoin.
May: 25,000 digital photos and ID scans relating to patients of the Grozio Chirurgija cosmetic surgery clinic in Lithuania were obtained and published without consent by an unknown group demanding ransoms. Thousands of clients from more than 60 countries were affected. The breach brought attention to weaknesses in Lithuania's information security.
June: 2017 Petya cyberattack.
June: TRITON (TRISIS), a malware framework designed to reprogram Triconex safety instrumented systems (SIS) of industrial control systems (ICS), discovered in Saudi Arabian Petrochemical plant.
August: Hackers demand $7.5 million in bitcoin to stop pre-releasing HBO shows and scripts, including Ballers, Room 104 and Game of Thrones.
May-July 2017: The Equifax breach.
September 2017: Deloitte breach.
December: Mecklenburg County, North Carolina computer systems were hacked. They did not pay the ransom.
2018
March: The city of Atlanta, Georgia USA computer systems are seized by hackers with ransomware. They did not pay the ransom, and two Iranians were indicted by the FBI on cyber crime charges for the breach.
May: A speculative execution exploit named Speculative Store Bypass (sometimes referred to as "Variant 4") is disclosed by researchers. The town of Wasaga Beach in Ontariao, Canada computer systems are seized by hackers with ransomware.
June: Lazy FP State Restore, a speculative execution exploit affecting Intel Core CPUs, is announced by Intel.
October: West Haven, Connecticut USA computer systems are seized by hackers with ransomware, they paid $2,000 in ransom.
November: The first U.S. indictment of individual people for ransomware attacks occurs. The U.S. Justice Department indicted two men Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri who allegedly used the SamSam ransomware for extortion, netting them more than $6 million in ransom payments. The companies infected with the ransomware. they used included Allscripts, Medstar Health, and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. Altogether, the attacks caused victims to lose more than $30 million, in addition to the ransom payments.
2019
March: Jackson County, Georgia USA computer systems are seized by hackers with ransomware, they paid $400,000 in ransom. The city of Albany, New York USA experiences a ransomware cyber attack.
April: The city of Augusta, Maine USA computer systems are seized by hackers using ransomware. The city of Greenville, North Carolina USA computer systems are seized by hackers using ransomware known as RobbinHood. Imperial County, in California USA, computer systems are seized by hackers using Ryuk ransomware.
May: The city of Baltimore, Maryland USA computer systems are seized by hackers using ransomware known as RobbinHood that encrypts files with a "file-locking" virus, as well as the tool EternalBlue.
June: The city of Riviera Beach, Florida USA paid roughly $600,000 ransom in Bitcoin to hackers who seized their computers using ransomware. Hackers steal 18 hours of unreleased music from the band Radiohead demanding $150,000 ransom. Radiohead released the music to the public anyway and did not pay the ransom.
September: A security flaw in the TLS-handling code of the Exim mail transfer agent is disclosed, which could potentially allow for attackers to execute code remotely as the superuser on affected servers. It was reported that around 5 million servers were impacted at the time of public disclosure.
2020s
2020
Anonymous announced cyber-attacks of at least five Malaysian websites including that of Johor and Sabah state governments as well as the International Trade and Industry Ministry. As a result, eleven individuals were nabbed as suspects.
In February, an incident occurred where personal information belonging to over 10.6 million guests of MGM Resorts hotels was leaked on a hacking forum. The leaked data consisted of contact information of numerous former hotel guests, including well-known individuals such as Justin Bieber, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and several government officials.
In June 2020, Wattpad, a user-generated stories website, experienced a significant data breach that resulted in the exposure of nearly 268.745.495 million records. This breach had severe consequences as the compromised data was initially sold in private sales for over $100,000. Eventually, it was made available on a public hacking forum, where it was widely shared without any cost. As a result, a vast amount of personal information, including names, usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, general geographic location, birth dates, and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes, were exposed in this incident.
2021
On May 7, 2021, The Colonial Pipeline Cyberattack took place on May 7, 2021, when Colonial Pipeline had a ransomware attack.The cyberattack halted all of the pipelines operations.
Brenntag Ransomware was attacked when a group of hackers extracted 150GB of data during the attack and threatened to leak it unless the company paid $7.5 million.
During the period of December 2021 - April 2022, a string of alarming impersonation emails were received by individuals, originating from an unidentified hacker. The hacker would gain unauthorized access to someone's Gmail account and proceed to impersonate the victims, sending intimidating messages that appeared to be sent by the compromised individuals. These emails reportedly contained death threats, efforts to sabotage relationships, and even made it appear as though the impersonated individuals were engaging in bullying behavior.
In the month of March, a group of hackers caused significant disruption to Australia's Channel 9 News live broadcast. This incident led to the channel being unable to air multiple shows and also impacted the production of 9 News' printed materials. The attack, which was confirmed to be a ransomware attack, not only successfully took shows off the air but also resulted in the staff being locked out of their email accounts, blocked from accessing the internet, and caused a halt in the production systems for printed materials. It is worth noting that this cyber-attack marked a significant milestone as it was the largest one ever experienced by an Australian media company.