Hack SolarWinds
One of the most devastating attacks of 2020 occurred in the last month, when hackers, considered "Russians" in the Western press, compromised the internal systems of SolarWinds, a software maker used by tens of thousands of companies.
Attackers were able to remotely download the software update to 18,000 SolarWinds clients, after which they were able to steal, destroy and modify data on the networks of these clients.
The largest victims of this attack were a number of US agencies - the Treasury Department, the National Informatics and Telecommunications Administration under the Department of Commerce (NTIA), the National Institutes of Health under the US Department of Health (NIH), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency, Department of Homeland Security, State Department USA, National Nuclear Safety Administration, and US Department of Energy. It is also reported that the hack affected Microsoft's cloud service.
The consequences of this hack may not appear until a few months later, but it is already clear that the attack on SolarWinds is one of the largest acts of cyber espionage in the past few years. The situation was greatly complicated by the fact that the attackers started their campaign back in March this year, but it remained unnoticed until the winter of 2020, which aggravated its effect.
Hijacking Twitter and Nintendo accounts
In July of this year, Twitter's internal systems were hacked by a gang of attackers who hijacked a number of celebrity accounts to promote a cryptocurrency scam.
Among the victims are Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mike Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and some other public figures.
In the hacked profiles, cybercriminals posted information about the "distribution of bitcoins" - the attackers asked users to transfer $ 1,000 in bitcoins in order to further double this amount. Using the hacked accounts of respected people, the criminals gained confidence in their followers - some of them actually transferred money to the specified wallet, not even suspecting that they were being deceived. It is reported that cybercriminals were able to earn about $ 117,000.
In April, a massive compromise of user accounts occurred at Nintendo. As a result of the attack, 300 thousand people were injured.
Charges, in this case, were brought against three young men - 19-year-old Mason John Shepard from the UK, 22-year-old Nima Fasely from Orlando, Florida, and 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark, who was detained by law enforcement agencies. Also, American intelligence agencies believe that a 16-year-old teenager from Massachusetts could also have been involved in the attack on Twitter, who allegedly played an important role in the planning and implementation of the hack.
Unidentified cybercriminals have gained access to the Nintendo Network ID (NNID) assigned to each user. The attackers obtained personal information of Nintendo customers, such as dates of birth, regions of residence, and postal addresses, as well as billing information if it was added to the profile. The company promised to compensate the cash costs if the user loses part of his funds due to hackers.
Dusseldorf hospital attack
In September, a hacker attack using a ransomware virus took place in Germany, which indirectly led to the death of a person. The woman, who needed urgent hospitalization, was not admitted to a hospital in Dusseldorf due to hacking of computer systems and was sent to the neighboring city of Wuppertal, 32 km away.
Due to the fact that the time for salvation was lost, the patient died.
The Düsseldorf hospital battled the aftermath of the hacker attack for a week. According to the press service of the medical institution, the investigators found that the attackers had taken advantage of a vulnerability in "widely used commercial software." As a result, the hospital's computer systems went out of order one by one, as a result of which severe patients were sent to other hospitals, and all planned operations were canceled.
As it turned out later, the attackers did not know that the hospital was damaged as a result of their attack - initially, their target was the university to which the medical institution belongs. When the Düsseldorf police contacted the criminals and informed them that the patients were in danger, they provided law enforcement with a digital key to unlock the servers. After that, contact with the hackers was lost.
The goal is a low-cost airline
In May, it became known that the low-cost airline EasyJet had lost the personal data of its customers due to a hacker attack. Criminals have taken possession of the email addresses and flight histories of people using EasyJet's services. In addition, the data of bank cards fell into the hands of scammers. In total, 9 million of the company's customers were affected by the hack.
It is known that the company learned about the leak back in January 2020, but it was not until early April that the passengers whose cards were compromised were notified.
“It was a very advanced attack. It took us time to assess its scale and determine who is affected, ”the airline’s press service reported, noting that hackers were able to gain access not only to bank card numbers but also to the CVV code, which allows them to perform any transactions.
Vulnerability in iPhone
Another important hacker attack of 2020 is the humane iPhone hacking by Google Projekt Zero Ian Beer. He carried out a successful attack on an Apple smartphone to alert the world of the existing vulnerability.
According to Beer, using an exploit, an attacker could reboot an iOS device and take full control over it - including reading emails, chatting in instant messengers, downloading personal photos, and even possibly tracking the owner of the gadget using a microphone and a camera.
At the same time, the attack took place remotely via Wi-Fi networks - thus, a hacker could literally hack the iPhone without using hands.
The researcher admitted that it took him six months to carry out such a hack and demonstrate its capabilities, but he does not believe that such vulnerabilities should be ignored.
“After reading this study, you shouldn't think like this: no one is going to spend six months of my life hacking a smartphone, so I'm safe. You should think like this: only one person, working from his bedroom, was able to compromise the iPhone, ”said the security expert.
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