Over the past decade, our world has experienced horrific data breaches, a massive number of hackers, lots of nation-wide cyber-undercover activities, and devastating malware that has made systems inoperative. Data breaches take place daily, but during the 2010s, we were witnessed to some of the biggest cybercrime events in history.
By the Numbers: Cybercrime in the Last Decade
The exposure of private information of hundreds of millions of people put warnings on users over continuous fraudulent activity. By the numbers:
- Of the 20 largest recorded data breaches in history, 10 happened in the past decade.
- Each implicated the burglary of millions of personal data objects and financial information.
- The tally accounts for nearly 3 billion files stolen over the past 10 years.
This above list will show the most damaging data breaches caused for corporations, brokers and users. The number of data infringements, e.g. hacks, is progressively going uphill. In this article, we focus on hacks and practices that generated a new cybersecurity trend or caused a concept turn in how security experts looked at the whole ground of cybersecurity.
Here Are the 10 Biggest Data Breaches That Took Place Between 2010-2019
Whatsapp, 2019
Earlier this year, a security defect was uncovered in Facebook-owned app “Whatsapp.” This vulnerability could grant hackers with unauthorized access to their devices just by making a phone call that didn’t even need to be answered. If infiltrated, hackers could obtain data on users’ locations, and turn on their phone’s cameras and microphones. The company endorsed this exposure, stating that the abuse had all the characteristics of a state-supported attack. They promptly fixed the issue by releasing a new update right after the breach.
UnderAmour, 2018
Fitness clothing line “UnderAmour” revealed that cyberattackers had opened the backend database for their fitness app “MyFitnessPal.” Hackers accessed all types of personal information such as usernames, email addresses and passwords. The company’s stocks took a major hit after this data breach.
River City Media, 2017
River City Media’s data breach gave spammers a taste of their own medicine. Notorious for sending spam emails and pandering in hacking activities, River City Media’s questionable businesses were going smoothly until a defective backup caused a release of billions of email addresses. The company’s business logins and chat accounts became accessible to the public.
Bangladesh Bank, 2016
At the beginning of 2016, it was revealed that a group of hackers tried to steal more than $1 billion from the Bangladesh Bank. This attempt didn’t go as planned and hackers only got away with $80 million. While originally, everyone thought this was an inept hacker, it was later discovered that North Korea’s top hackers were behind the endeavored cybercrime.
Ashley Madison, 2015
Ashley Madison was probably one of the biggest data breaches of 2015. This cyber attack happened with a group of hackers called “Impact Team” that distributed the internal database of Ashley Madison, a dating site best known for casual affairs. Details that were posted on the dark web totaled 9.7 gigabytes and included account details and logins for 32 million users. Account details, logins and payment information was included in the hack. The aftermath was followed by some users committing suicide and many extortion efforts.
Yahoo, 2014-2013
Yahoo is known for being the largest data breach. The company stated that more than 500 million user accounts were uncovered in late 2014. That same year, they also revealed that another different data breach from 2013 concerned approximately one billion of its users. Hackers made away with personal information such as email addresses, names and phone numbers.
Court Ventures, 2012
Court Ventures is one of the major credit bureaus in the United States. Back in 2012, it accidentally sold its clients’ private data to a Vietnamese corruption mafia. The imposters pretended to be an American private investigator, and Court Ventures fell for it. The company was fooled into passing over banking information, credit card details, and even sensitive data, i.e., social security numbers.
Citibank, 2011
Citibank consented to pay around $50 thousand dollars to resolve with Connecticut after the state’s attorney general’s office claimed that the company had a known technical weakness in its online banking system. Roughly 360,000 credit card holders were affected by this data breach and the estimate cost was $20 million.
Netflix, 2010
Netflix executed the largest intentional privacy breach in 2010 when it provided data comprising over 100 million subscriber movie ratings to contest participants. Netflix claims that the data sets did not include subscriber names or personal information. Nevertheless, the lawsuit declares that investigators have been able to decipher Netflix’s unknown process to pinpoint individual subscribers.
ThreatModeler Strongly Recommended to Help Prevent Future Data Breaches
Innovative technologies present possibilities to develop data security into networks, devices, and applications from the design stages. ThreatModeler provides a great way to visualize your attack surface and map out the various threats and attacks vectors that it may contain. Threat modeling traditionally uses process flow diagrams to lay out the different components, user behaviors and communication flows. Threat Modeling used to be a manual process and take many hours to complete.
ThreatModeler is a leader in the threat model creation space and has automated key tasks to save organizations up to 80% on time-cost. ThreatModeler comes out-of-the-box integrated with trusted threat libraries and security guidelines as outlined by AWS and Azure, among others. ThreatModeler lends itself to IT project management with its Jira integration, enabling DevSecOps teams to assign tasks, and keep track and communicate on progress as needed.
To learn more about how ThreatModeler™ can help your organization build a scalable threat modeling process, book a demo to speak to a ThreatModeler expert today.
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