In the bottom line, cyber attackers will remain motivated to invade your internal systems. The key is to make stronger source codes, in addition to a proven and effective security system, that will not only lock down the system but will also track the suspicious activities.

When it comes to cybercrime, several Australian organizations, including legal firms, courier companies, and even Cadbury have faced such vicious cyber attacks. While the majority of times these cyber attacks are known to us almost immediately, there has been some reported cyber crimes which were identified when the businesses have already lost a huge amount of customer data.

Just like Shadow Brokers, a mysterious group of hackers that surfaced in August – 2016, the identity of some of these attackers remains unidentified for a long time, and businesses on the other hand, remain prone to these attacks, growing in their impact as the time passes by.

Cyber crimes are carried out with many purposes, and are not just limited to businesses or entire organizations or to capture customer data, but they can also be carried out to attack an individual yet influential figure. Speaking of this, hacking of the personal accounts of social media savvy Mark Zuckerberg was the biggest cybersecurity failure in the year 2016.

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Which is why, everybody can be vulnerable to cyber attack and at any time – losing the potential customer data. To your surprise, there have been many big names that have face the ordeal of cyber attacks in the recent past; including one of the biggest search engines used worldwide – YAHOO!

YAHOO faced an unexpected event!

In the year of frequent mega-breaches, Yahoo kept the distinction, by potentially exposing the largest amount to customer data at risk. The cyber attackers use a technique called ‘credential stuffing’, which typically uses the password and username of one account, to get access to or hack the other account.

Last September, facing the huge cyber attack, Yahoo confirmed that almost 500 million users were compromised due to that cyber attack. The attack included email addresses, names, encrypted passwords and even phone numbers – everything that could be counted as the important and confidential part of customer data.

The company stated that the data was received from a 2014 intrusion into their systems by the ‘state sponsored actors’. The announcement was made in the middle of the acquisition of Verizon Communications, for 4.8 billion dollars, possibly affecting the deal as well.

JP Morgan had criminals in their systems for almost a month!

JP Morgan – the largest bank of USA – discovered a severe security breach in 2014, stating that the attackers had already intruded their systems a month ago. During the time period of a month, millions of businesses as well as individuals accounts were illegally accessed. Whereas the bank already maintains a cybersecurity system, the attack was reported as the biggest of all attacks on banks, in the history.

As per the New York Times report, the vicious attack could have been avoided by simply installing a simple security fix, at the right time, to an overlooked server. Even though the bank had already compromised many of its users or customer data, it started spending millions of dollars for maintaining an advanced and affected cybersecurity system later on.

Sony Pictures lost it in an instant!

Back in 2014, Sony Pictures faced an event that created a lasting impact on the worldwide movie industry. This event not only shattered the business relationships but even sparked a movement, fighting for the gender pay equality in entire Hollywood.

All of this happened when a hack locked out the voicemails and emails of Sone employees for days. While Sony expected the loss up to email or voicemails, the leaked information also included the personal information of many crew members, salaries of hundreds of many employees, information of high profile actors, along with hundreds of confidential emails. Moreover, all the movies that were awaiting release were made available by the hackers, for download.

Tumblr compromised their ‘salted and hashed passwords’!

Tumblr revealed a cyber attack in the year 2016, but to surprise you, the attack was actually carried out in the year 2013. After three years of giving full access to its users’ credentials to cyber attackers, Tumblr identified the access of the third party, to obtain access to almost 65 million Tumblr accounts, as a result of a data breach.

The personal information obtained from these 65 million accounts was actually offered for sale by the hackers. This information includes the encrypted passwords and email addresses. Since the breach came to light in 2016, the number of compromised user accounts/customer data made it, as one of the biggest reported, security breaches at that time, in the entire world, ever.

My Space credentials were sold in an online hacker forum!

Similar to the attack on Timber and by the same hacker named ‘Peace’, in 2016, My Space compromised over 360 million accounts of My Space. In 2016, My Space confirmed the attack that was carried out in 2013 and stolen the many email addresses and password combinations. These username and passwords were later on made available for sale in a forum, which was run by the hacker, online. The data breach of My Space even also put the accounts on the sale of those users, who had not used the platform for several years.