Who are the Hackers? Illicit computer intruders who are often thought of as pathological individuals or groups seeking personal thrills, monetary gains, publicity for their causes, and numerous other goals. Many hackers are not malicious, in that they hack for the delight of lurking. However, others are intent upon gathering information for profit or intelligence gain, corrupting data or denying access to a system, or simply to see what harm they can cause. Here are recent Hacking attacks that took place in the US.
In December 2013, retail giant Target announced hackers had stolen the personal information of over seventy million customers and the credit card information of forty million shoppers through malware planted in Target’s servers.
In November 2014, a previously unknown hacker group named Guardians of Peace claimed it stole 100 terabytes of data from Sony Pictures Entertainment in a massive data breach. Sony later confirmed the hackers made off with the personal records of 6,000 employees, as well as unreleased movies, private emails between executives, and unfinished scripts, while destroying 3,000 computers and 800 servers in the process.
On June 4, 2015, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) made an alarming announcement: a “cyber-intrusion” led to hackers stealing roughly four million current and former federal employees’ personal information. news agencies labeled this attack as one of “the biggest ever of the government’s computer networks.” On July 9, 2015, OPM released a second shocking announcement: in a second “cyber incident,” hackers stole the personal information of 21.5 million people, including “19.7 million individuals that applied for a background investigation, and 1.8 million non-applicants, predominately spouses or co-habitants of applicants” from OPM’s background investigation databases, along with 5.6 million fingerprint records. Although these numbers are overwhelming, attacks like these are rapidly becoming the norm in an increasingly digital age. In February 2016, the Internal Revenue Service announced that as a result of a 2015 cyberattack, hackers gained access to and stole tax data from up to 700,000 taxpayer accounts and attempted to break into another 575,000 accounts unsuccessfully.
In July 2016, online publisher WikiLeaks released 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments hacked from the accounts of top members of the U.S. Democratic National Committee between January 2015 and May 2016. No doubt this is why James R. Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, has named cyber threats as the top “strategic threat to the United States.”
- Gunzel, J. A. (2017). TACKLING THE CYBER THREAT: THE IMPACT OF THE DOD’S “NETWORK PENETRATION REPORTING AND CONTRACTING FOR CLOUD SERVICES” RULE ON DOD CONTRACTOR CYBERSECURITY. Public Contract Law Journal, 46(3), 687-712. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1918883911?accountid=33975