Hacking Incidents that Rocked the Internet in 2016

It must already be clear to most readers that internet is not a safe place to share personal details. Regardless of how secure website creators claim their servers to be, data breaches are common and have become persistent than ever. The recent rise in Ransomware attacks victimizing nearly 40% of businesses across the globe, proves that users need to always be alert to avoid such vicious cracks in their security. But every now and then, comes a news about some major brand name getting struck by data breach. We certainly don’t want our readers to become paranoid. But rather learn from this article to take your internet security seriously. Here’re some of the biggest hacking Incidents this year.

1. US Justice Department

Justice is blind, but not to the point that it cannot protect itself. This however was clearly not the situation when, a group of hackers breached the US Justice Department website. The hijackers leaked confidential information of over 9000 Homeland Security employees. This was followed by a further dump of 20000 FBI employee contact details. It was only after a week that the authorities realized this data breach. According to various reports, this was hackers move against US support for Israel related to the ongoing conflict in the middle east.

2. Yahoo

It might surprise you how lightly major online moguls take their security. In the recent turn of events everyone’s favorite search engine during the late 90’s has finally topped their own record in the biggest online data breach ever. Yahoo had already been hit by a similar incident in 2014 with more than 500 million accounts hacked. This time they’ve managed to lose more than 1 billion account to hackers. Yahoo officials claim this breach to be funded by the government. Nevertheless, since the company has been panned badly for its poor protection against spam and phishing attacks, their claims seem a little far-fetched. Learn your lessons Yahoo!

3. SnapChat

With more than 100 million daily active users, SnapChat is certainly a big-fat-kill for any hacker. Since 2016 has been particularly bad for online activities, SnapChat too admitted losing a heavy chunk of user data in February. Although the company officials claim to have reported the incident to FBI within 4-hours of its occurrence, this still is not a pleasant news for its user base.

4. National Lottery UK

Although this was not as magnanimous as the abovementioned, the idea that hackers will exploit each and every possibility to compromise data is extremely unsettling. While the data was leaked well before the authorities found out, Hackers were able to access more than 25000 user accounts using the leaked details. Thankfully the incident was reported before any major damage could be done and users were prompted to reset their passwords. This still couldn’t protect their personal details from being exposed to criminals, who could attempt to use them fraudulently.

5. Dropbox

While the internet is filled with blogs that tell you to upload and secure your data in a cloud server, it still doesn’t stop cybercriminals from targeting it. In a shocking reveal this year, the popular cloud storage provider Dropbox claimed to have lost more than 68 million user passwords and login details. The company however, did learn a lesson and are most likely upgrading their SHA1 security standard to Bcrypt.

Hackers certainly do not differentiate between the rich and poor, weak or powerful when targeting their victims. Yes, that certainly puts them above several politicians, but that doesn’t mean they’re not criminals. Internet security has become a major issue for users and should not be taken lightly at any cost.