2016 was quite a year for the cyber-security world. It seemed as if data breaches and hacks have been more and more commonplace during the past few years, and 2016 was no exception. Here are some of the worst breaches of 2016 :
- Yahoo – 500 million user accounts. This was one of the worst hacks EVER. Especially since it actually occurred in 2014 but Yahoo did not know about it until 2016.
- Yahoo – again. ONE BILLION users this time (yes, Billion with a B). This hack was actually executed in 2013, but Yahoo seemed to have missed it.
- The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) – The medical records of many US Athletes were publicly divulged by Russian hackers.
- FACC – The Austrian manufacturer of airplane/aerospace parts was hacked, and about 50 million Euros were stolen.
- Dyn – A botnet attacked the DNS service provider earlier this year in October. What does DNS do? It converts “Google.com” or “netflix.com” to an IP address, so you don’t have to remember all the IP addresses to every site. Many sites went down for the day.
- IRS – Over 700,000 transcripts were stolen. According to the IRS, it may have been professional Russian hackers.
- DNC – the Russians were at it quite a bit this year, if you haven’t picked up on it. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign due to a scandal that arose when it was found that the DNC was trying to sabotage Bernie Sander’s campaign in favor of front-runner Hillary Clinton.
- Bitfinex – the Bitcoin exchange was broken into (digitally), and more than 65 million dollars were stolen. The identity of the hackers is still unknown.
Among these hacks there were also more : LinkedIn, Dropbox, Oracle, various hotel chains, etc.
Make strong passwords for 2017 everyone!!!