Hacker attacks 2020: top

2020 has become a symbol of global immersion in the Web. All around, from small organizations to the largest enterprises in the world, have switched to the remote mode of work. Defense perimeters became more fragile and incident response times became longer. And cybercriminals could not ignore such a confluence of events. The cyber threat environment was dominated by ransomware viruses attacking schools, hospitals, and private companies. There were also some massive takeovers of social media accounts. So, let’s have a look at the top-5 attacks of 2020.

SolarWinds hack

One of the most devastating attacks of 2020 occurred in the last month of the year – hackers, considered “Russians” in the Western press, compromised the internal systems of SolarWinds, a software maker used by tens of thousands of companies.

Attackers managed to remotely download the software update to 18,000 SolarWinds clients, after which they were able to steal, destroy and modify data on the networks of these clients.

The largest victims of this attack were a number of US agencies – Department of the Treasury, National Information and Telecommunications Administration under the Department of Commerce (NTIA), National Institutes of Health under the US Department of Health (NIH), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State USA, National Nuclear Safety Administration; and US Department of Energy. It is also reported that the hack affected the cloud service of Microsoft Corporation.

Hijacking Twitter and Nintendo accounts

In July of the previous year, Twitter’s internal systems were hacked by a gang of attackers who hijacked a number of celebrity accounts to promote a cryptocurrency fraudulent scheme.

Among the victims are Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mike Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and some other public figures.

In the hacked profiles, cybercriminals posted information about the “distribution of bitcoins” – the attackers asked users to transfer $ 1,000 in bitcoins in order to further double this amount. Using the hacked accounts of respected people, the criminals gained confidence in their followers – some of them actually transferred money to the specified wallet, not even suspecting that they were being deceived. It is reported that cybercriminals managed to earn about $117 thousand.

Dusseldorf hospital attack

In September, a hacker attack took place in Germany. The hackers were using a ransomware virus, which indirectly led to the death of a person. The woman, who needed urgent hospitalization, was not admitted to a hospital in Dusseldorf due to hacking of computer systems and was sent to the neighboring city of Wuppertal, 32 km away.

Due to the fact that the time for salvation was lost, the patient died.

The Dusseldorf hospital struggled with the consequences of the hacker attack for a week. According to the press service of the medical institution, the investigators found that the attackers took advantage of a vulnerability in “widely used commercial software.” As a result, the hospital’s computer systems went out of order one by one, as a result of which severe patients were sent to other hospitals, and all planned operations were canceled.

The goal is a low-cost airline

In May, it became known that the low-cost airline EasyJet had lost the personal data of its customers due to a hacker attack. Criminals have taken possession of the email addresses and flight histories of people using EasyJet’s services. In addition, the data of bank cards fell into the hands of fraudsters. In total, 9 million of the company’s customers were affected by the hack.

We also know that the company learned about the leakage back in January 2020, but it was not until early April that the passengers whose cards were compromised were notified.

“It was a very advanced attack. It took us some time to assess its scale and determine who is affected, ” the airline’s press service reported, noting that hackers managed to gain access not only to bank card numbers but also to the CVV code, which allowed them to perform any operations.

Vulnerability in iPhone

Another important hacker attack of 2020 is the humane iPhone hacking by Google Project Zero member Ian Beer. He carried out a successful attack on an Apple smartphone to alert the world of the existing vulnerability.

According to Beer, using an exploit, an attacker could reboot an iOS device and gain full control over it – including reading emails, chatting in instant messengers, downloading personal photos, and even possibly establishing surveillance of the owner of the gadget using a microphone and camera.

At the same time, the attack took place remotely via Wi-Fi networks – thus, a hacker could literally hack the iPhone without using hands.