Top 10 Most Notorious Cyber Attacks in History

Cyber warfare seems to be dominating headlines as of late. Be it a clandestine groups hacking computers for ‘fun’ or alleged government agencies attempting to steal classified information, the Internet landscape has been transformed into a binary battlefield.
Who needs a gun when you have a keyboard? - ARN staff










 
Robert Tappan Morris and the Morris Worm (1988):
Creator of the first computer worm transmitted through the Internet, Morris, a student at Cornell Univeristy in the USA, claimed it his progeny was not aimed to harm but was made for the innocuous intent to determine the vastness of the cyberspace.
Things went pear-shaped when a the worm encountered a critical error and morphed into a virus which replicated rapidly and began infecting other computers resulting in denial of service. The damage? 6000 computers were reportedly affected causing an estimated $10-$100 million dollars in repair bills.
While this event could be pinned as being an unfortunate accident, it no doubt played a part in inspiring the calamitous distributed denial-of-service (DdoS) type of attacks we see today. 

 

 

MafiaBoy causes $1 billion dollars in damages (2000):
Another 15 year old that caused mischief in cyber space was Michael Calce a.k.a. MafiaBoy.
In 2000, Calce, now 25, was just a Canadian high school student when decided to unleash a DDoS attack on a number of high-profile commercial websites including Amazon, CNN, eBay and Yahoo!.An industry expert estimated the attacks resulted in a $US1.2 billion dollar damage bill.
He was later apprehended. Because he was still a juvenile, Calce was sentenced in 2001 to eight months in open custody, meaning his movements and actions would be restricted. His online access was also limited by the court.
Calce and since scored gigs as a columnist and recently published a book about his




 

  Google China hit by cyber attack (2009):
When Google's Chinese headquarters detected a security breech in mid-December, it opened up a whole can of worms (pun intended) implicating the Chinese Government.
Hackers had gained access to several Google’s corporate servers and intellectual property was stolen.
In a blog, Google said it has “evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinse human rights activists”. As the company dug deeper, they found numerous Gmail of users from US, China and Europe had been routinely been accessed without permission. Those emails belonged to advocates of human rights in China.
All eyes darted towards the Chinse Government, which has been accused of flagrantly disregarding human rights for years.
Google entered the Chinese market with www.google.cn in 2006 and capitulated to China’s stringent Internet censorship regime. The cyber attacks in December 2009 resulted in the company’s re-evaluation of its business in the country.
In March 2010, Google relocated its servers for google.cn to Hong Kong in order to escape China’s Internet filtering policy.


   

  












 Teen hacks NASA and US Defense Department:
The year was 1999. Jonathan James was 15 at the time but what he did that year secured him a place in the hacker’s hall of fame.
James had managed to penetrate the computers of a US Department of Defense divison and installed a ‘backdoor’ on its servers. This allowed him to intercept thousands of internal emails from different government organisations including ones containing usernames and passwords for various military computers.
Using the stolen information, James was able to steal a piece of NASA software which cost the space exploration agency $41,000 as systems were shutdown for three weeks.
According to NASA, “the software [purported to be worth $1.7 million] supported the International Space Station’s physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space.”
James was later caught but received a light sentence due to his young age.
He committed suicide in 2008 after he was accused of conspiring with other hackers to steal credit card information. James denied the allegation in his suicide letter.















Phone lines blocked to win Porsche (1995)
Kevin Poulsen is famous for his work in hacking into the Los Angeles phone system in a bid to win a Ferrari on a radio competiton.
LA KIIS FM was offering a Porsche 944 S2 to the 102th caller. Poulsen guaranteed his success as he took control of the phone network and effectively blocked incoming calls to the radio station’s number.
He won the Porsche but the law caught up to him and he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Poulsen later became the senior editor for IT security publication, Wired News .




 


 Hacker targets Scientology (2008):
In January 2008, a New Jersey teenager along with a gang of hackers launched a DDoS attack that crippled the Church of Scientology website for several days.
The group is dubbed Annoymous and is staunchly against the ‘religion’.
Dmitriy Guzner, who was 19 years old, was charged and convicted for the DDoS attack. The maximum penalty was 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine but he was ultimately sentenced to two years probation and was ordered to pay the Church of Scientology $37,500.
A second man has been charged for the attack.




 



 Solar Sunrise (1998):
Originally thought to have been the efforts of Iraqi operatives, a systematic cyber attack was launched in the US which seized control of over 500 government and private computer systems. The hackers were exploiting computers running on the Sun Solaris operating system, hence collective attacks were called ‘Solar Sunrise’.
The US Government assembled a number of defense divisions including the FBI and the Defense Information Systems Agency to investigate the matter.
Much to everybody’s surprise, there were no Iraqi operatives involved in the hacking. Investigations resulted in the arrest of three teenagers from California.
While it was cased closed for ‘Solar Sunrise’, the attacks highlighted how a co-ordinated effort could affect an entire country’s IT infrastructure.



 



 The Melissa virus (1999)
It was a very simple virus which ended up costing $80 million in damages.
The Melissa virus would infect Microsoft Word documents and automatically disseminates itself as an attachment via email. It would mail out to the first 50 names listed in an infected computer’s Outlook email address box.
The creator of Melissa, David Smith, said he did not intend for the virus to harm computers but was still arrested and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Incidentally, anti-virus software sales went gangbusters that year.



 


 Internet attacked (2002):
In 2002, a cyber attack aimed squarely at all 13 domain name system’s root servers in the US almost brought the Internet to its knees. It was a DDoS attack which lasted for one hour. While it doesn’t some like a long time, it was the scale of the attack that was most alarming.
At that time, US Federal authorities described the attack as the largest and most complex in history.
Internet servers were severely strained for one hour although users probably didn’t experience any adverse effects. But if the attacks lasted any longer, it would have brought the Internet to a standstill.


 


 Hacker steals tens of million of credit card details (2009):
Gonzales, a hacker from Miami, was responsible for one of the biggest fraud case in US history.
Gonzales was responsible for sealing tens of millions of credit card and debit card numbers from over 250 financial institutions. He had hacked the payment card network from companies including the 7-Eleven convenient store chain.
Facing at least three separate cases related to hacking in three states, Gonzales pled guilty in December.

Window 10 - What do you think?

Microsoft has made its latest pre-release build of Windows 10available for installation to members of its Windows Insider program. The buildincludes much of what Microsoft showcased earlier this week including the new Start Menu with the ability to expand to a full-screen experience. The January Technical Preview build– 9926 – also includes Cortana integration. Cortana sits on the taskbar and can help search for apps, settings and files as well as search the web on your behalf. There’s also a revised Settings menu which has been reorganized to be more reminiscent of the Control Panel. Installers will also find the new Photos, Maps and Xbox apps as well as the Windows Store Beta. Microsoft also implemented some minor changes based on feedback from Insiders. For example, a bug in which keyboard lights weren’t working to indicate Caps lock / Num lock / Scroll lock has now been fixed. What’s more, the team added an option to select the default folder when opening File Explorer and modified the aesthetics of ALT+TAB. Notably absent from the update is Spartan, Microsoft’s brand new web browser, as well as support for Music Locker which is based on OneDrive. What are your thoughts on Windows 10 thus far? Do you like the direction Microsoft is going or are we looking at another lackluster OS in the making?

WORLD'S STRANGEST MEN

10 Strange And Mysterious Men

The world is full of mysterious men that have made an impact on history, people who have followed a secretive lifestyle and died with unanswered questions about their true motivations. In many cases, these people are top secret spies, psychics, serial killers, government scientists, mafia members, assassins, or whistle blowers. The individuals have all been tainted by bizarre accusations and unsubstantiated claims. In response, conspiracy theories have emerged to describe the events. Here we examine the lives of 10 mysterious men that continue to fascinate people around the world.

10 Wolf Messing

In 1899, Wolf Messing was born in the town of Góra Kalwaria, which is located 25 kilometers (15 mi) southeast of Warsaw, Poland. As a teenager, Messing claimed to be a psychic. He could alter people’s perceptions and predict future outcomes based on mental telepathy and body language clues. During his shows, Messing would enter a trance-like state and attempt to find hidden objects. He performed in front of large crowds and became famous after World War II. Messing even caught the attention of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.
In 1937, Wolf Messing predicted that Adolf Hitler would die if he ever threatened Russia and “turned toward the East.” The message angered Hitler and caused Messing to flee to Russia, where he continued to perform his act. As the story goes, Messing was then forced to prove his psychic ability for Stalin by convincing a bank teller to give him cash with nothing more than a blank piece of paper. After the successful demonstration, Messing became a teacher for the KGB.
Messing’s life was chronicled in an autobiography titled About Myself. One quote from the book says, “My ability to see the future may seem to contradict the materialist understanding of the world. But there is not a particle of the unknowable or supernatural about precognition.” Wolf Messing died in 1974. Since that time, many facts attributed to his life have been questioned and deemed unsubstantiated by historical references—a fact which has only contributed to his mystery.

9 Adam Rainer

In 1899, Adam Rainer was born in Graz, Austria. When he was 19 years old, Rainer was medically tested and determined to be extremely short for his age. His height was said to be 1.4 meters (4’8″). However, another source says that he was only 1.18 meters (3’10.5″) at the age of 21. At this time, Rainer was thin, weak, and showed signs of dwarfism. Despite his short size, it was noted that he had large feet. In 1920, Rainer started to experience a massive growth spurt. His arms, legs, hands, and feet exploded in size and his health deteriorated. Rainer started to lose his eyesight, and it became hard for him to eat and walk.
By 1930, Adam Rainer was two meters (6’9″) tall. It has been suggested that he had a tumor in his pituitary gland, which caused an overproduction of growth hormone. Rainer developed a protruding forehead and jaw and thicker lips, which are all characteristic of acromegaly. In the early 1930s, it is thought that he had surgery to remove the tumor, but the operation didn’t stop the growth. Eventually, Rainer became bedridden and died in 1950 at a height of 2.34 meters (7’8″). The Guinness Book of World Records has listed Adam Rainer as the “most variable stature” in history. The entry says that he was the only person to be both a dwarf and a giant.

8 Raymond Lee Harvey

On May 5, 1979, a man named Raymond Lee Harvey was arrested by the Secret Service for concealing a loaded starter gun only 10 minutes before President Jimmy Carter was set to give a speech in Los Angeles. Harvey was arrested only 15.2 meters (50 ft) from where Carter was going to talk. After being interrogated by the police, Harvey admitted to being part of a four-man plot to kill the president. His role in the attack was to shoot into the air, while another assassin killed Carter. Harvey conspired with a 21-year-old named Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz, who was arrested by the police. Ortiz admitted to being with Harvey, but denied a plot to kill the president.
Raymond Lee Harvey had a history of mental illness. His story was initially thought to be fabricated, however, after investigators found corroborative testimony, the claims were taken seriously. The assassination attempt was reported by the mainstream media, but then quickly disappeared. Many of the details surrounding Raymond Lee Harvey remain a mystery. After a series of revelations, Harvey and Ortiz were held on bond, but the charges were eventually dropped.
As you would expect, people have connected the fact that the potential assassin was named Raymond Lee Harvey and his conspirator was Osvaldo Ortiz. In Spanish, Osvaldo is the equivalent to Oswald, which makes the pair “Lee Harvey Oswald.” The coincidence has spawned a series of conspiracy theories that say the assassination attempt was fabricated in order to scare the Carter administration.

7 Karl Koecher

In 1934, Karl Koecher was born in Czechoslovakia. When he was 28, Koecher joined the Czech intelligence agency. In the mid-1960s, he moved to the United States and received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. Koecher then obtained a position with the CIA and became a spy for the USSR. He is one of only a few people to have penetrated the CIA for the Soviet Union. A large percentage of information on his life has never been revealed.
It is unclear what tipped the CIA off that Koecher was a double agent, but in 1984 he was arrested and accused of being a spy. The CIA attempted to make him turn against the USSR, but Koecher was eventually deemed to be unreliable. After the FBI made mistakes in his case, Koecher was set free. On February 11, 1986, he was part of a spy exchange that involved Anatoly Shcharansky. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia, Koecher was named a hero and given a job with the government.
In 1989, it was suggested that Koecher was involved with the Velvet Revolution, but he denied the claims. After the fall of communism in the USSR, little information was published on his life. However, he has been accused of being connected to the CIA. It was alleged that Koecher was involved in a defrauding scheme that provided Mohammed Al-Fayed with false documents that supported the conspiracy surrounding the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

6 Lawrence E. King Jr.

Lawrence E. King Jr. is the man who was at the center of the child sex ring allegations involving the Omaha, Nebraska, branch of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union (FCFCU) that emerged in the late 1980s. Despite the high-profile case, little information has been published on King’s activities. In 1988, Lawrence King was an active Republican politician that managed the FCFCU, which was a credit union used to help the poor. After several tips, it began to emerge that $38 million was missing from the organization’s funds, which spawned an investigation that found evidence of physical and sexual child abuse.
The sources of the reports were initially deemed credible, and information emerged that young boys and girls from foster homes were being transported around the country by plane in order to provide sexual favors for rich people. A large number of victims came forward and said that they were sexually molested. The reports were examined by the Executive Board of the Nebraska Legislature, and many cases of sexual abuse were recorded. It was speculated that the abuse was performed by prominent political figures in the Republican Party.
The allegations were investigated by two different grand juries, who found the information to be a “carefully crafted hoax.” Many people were shocked by the decision; they thought the accusations were “scripted by a person or persons with considerable knowledge of the people and institutions of Omaha.” After the decision, a Nebraska Senator called the grand jury release “a strange document.” The second grand jury also found the material unsubstantiated and sentenced an alleged victim, Alisha Owen, to 9-15 years in prison for perjury. Eventually, Lawrence King was convicted of embezzling over $38 million and served 10 years in prison. The scandal produced a large number of conspiracy theories that include tales of devil worship, political sex parties, cannibalism, CIA gun smuggling, and the first Bush administration.

5 Arnold Paole

In the early 18th century, people in southeastern Europe started to believe in the existence of vampires. They were seen as a major problem to society, especially in Transylvania. People took to digging up graves and staking dead bodies that were deemed to be vampires. Some individuals even reported seeing their dead relatives walking the streets and attacking living people. The panic spread around Europe, and many publications speculated on the phenomenon. Two of the most famous examples of vampires from this time are Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole.
In 1726, Arnold Paole died in the village of Meduegna, which was near the Morava River. Immediately after his death, people started seeing his undead body. The situation caused panic in Serbia and officials called for the help of two Austrian military doctors, Glaser and Flückinger. The investigation and report produced by Flückinger was named Visum et Repertum and confirmed the existence of vampires.
The report said that Arnold Paole’s dead body was responsible for the deaths of four separate people. His corpse was dug up and found to be “quite complete and undecayed, with fresh blood from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.” Based on this, it was concluded that Paole was a vampire. His heart was staked and his body burned. Five years after the initial outbreak, the deaths of 17 people were attributed to Paole and vampirism. His story was published in the London Journal on March 11, 1732, in which it was proclaimed that vampires were drinking the blood of the living in Hungary.

4 Walter Haut

In the summer of 1947, Walter Haut worked as a public information officer for the U.S. 509th Bomb Group in Roswell, New Mexico. On July 8, 1947, he was ordered to issue a press release announcing that the U.S. Army had recovered a “flying disc” in the desert. The statement was given, but immediately retracted by the U.S. military. Haut was told to promote the idea that the debris was nothing more than a high-altitude weather balloon. The explanation caused criticism by the national media and spawned the Roswell UFO conspiracy theory.
In regards to the initial press release, Haut said: “When that hit the news wires, the world came to an end, as far as I was concerned. My phone rang and rang and rang.” For the remainder of his career, Haut worked for the U.S. government. He claimed to know nothing about the wreckage and that he had simply provided a mistaken press release. However, in the early 1990s, after he retired, Haut changed the story. In 1997, he said: “I think it was an extremely well-planned cover-up.” For the last 15 years of his life, Haut proclaimed that he had witnessed an alien craft and bodies in Roswell.
In 2002, Haut signed an affidavit that described his experience with aliens, including details about the UFOs and extraterrestrial bodies. He claimed to have witnessed an egg-shaped craft and several dead aliens with elongated heads. In 2007, after the death of Haut, the information was published in the book Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60 Year Cover-Up. It has been suggested that Haut remained silent about the true events in Roswell out of respect for his friend Colonel William Blanchard. The reliability of the affidavit remains questionable.

3 Alexander Solonik

In 1960, Alexander Solonik was born in Kurgan, Russia. In the late 1980s, he was arrested for rape and sent to prison. In jail, he became targeted for death due to his association with the police. However, Solonik fought off multiple attacks and earned the respect of his fellow inmates. After escaping from prison in April 1990, Solonik became one of the most infamous Russian assassins in history. He murdered a large number of organized crime figures and gained the nicknames “Alexander the Great” and “Superkiller.”
The exact number of people Solonik murdered is a mystery, along with much of the details surrounding his life. In the early 1990s, he gained a reputation for being a lethal contract killer who had the ability to shoot ambidextrously. Solonik confessed to killing a large number of criminals, including Viktor Nikiforov, Valery Dlugach, Vladislav Vinner, and Andrey Rura. In 1994, he was arrested at Moscow’s Petrovsky marketplace. He was taken to Detention Center 1 in Moscow, but eventually escaped.
Solonik fled to Greece and set up a criminal organization in the area. He purchased a large amount of real estate in Athens and was placed on Russia’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. In 1997, a Greek newspaper reported that a Russian mafia boss had been found dead 15 miles from Athens. The man had been strangled to death and it was concluded that the corpse was Alexander Solonik, despite the fact that his fingerprints in the Interpol database were not accurate. The Greek authorities insisted that the body was not Solonik. However, he was officially declared dead. He’s never been heard from since, and the true influence of Solonik’s criminal network during the mid-1990s remains unknown.

2 Sidney Gottlieb

In 1918, Sidney Gottlieb was born in New York under the name of Joseph Scheider. He received a PhD in chemistry from Caltech and became an expert on lethal poisons. In 1951, Gottlieb joined the CIA and was given a job on the top secret biological warfare program MKULTRA. Project MKULTRA was a now-infamous series of experiments used to study human mind control and modification. During the project, Gottlieb organized experiments in which humans were used as guinea pigs. For this reason, he was given the nicknames “Black Sorcerer” and “Dirty Trickster.”
Gottlieb helped organize Operation Midnight Climax, which was a program where the CIA purchased houses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York in order to watch people. For the project, the CIA hired a large group of prostitutes that lured subjects back to a house, drugged them, and then had sex while Gottlieb and others observed from behind two-way mirrors. The experiments gave results in sexual blackmail, surveillance, and mind-altering drugs. Gottlieb was also involved with the Cuban Project, in which he developed ideas to poison Fidel Castro.
During his career, Gottlieb worked for Lockheed, DARPA, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. In one incident, he attempted to contaminate Iraq’s General Abdul Karim Qassim’s handkerchief with botulinum. He was also involved with the Phoenix Program, in which the U.S. performed mind control experiments on the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. In 1960, he played a role in America’s attempt to kill the Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. On November 28, 1953, biological warfare specialist Frank Olson died under mysterious circumstances while working under Sidney Gottlieb.

1 Sergei Tretyakov

Sergei Tretyakov was a Russian spy who defected to the United States in October 2000. During his time in Russia, Tretyakov was a colonel in the Russian intelligence service (S.V.R.) and oversaw covert operations in New York City and at the United Nations. Starting in 1997, Tretyakov became a double agent and passed secrets to the Americans. After moving to the United States, he was given a package worth $2 million and placed in the Witness Protection Program. In 2008, Tretyakov provided information about the SVR. He said that the Russian intelligence program is just as active today as ever. Tretyakov warned that the world should “wake up” to the danger.
He told NPR that his “defection was a major failure of the Russian intelligence.” Some of his revelations include the suggestion that Eldar Kouliev was an SVR spy. He said that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, was influenced by Russia, along with Canadian Alex Kindy. According to Tretyakov, the KGB fabricated the nuclear winter story to stop the development of the Pershing missiles in Europe. He said that the SVR developed a list of influential political figures that were assassinated in order to bring Vladimir Putin to power. He also recounted a conversation in which a man (Vladimir K. Dmitriev) discussed privately owned nuclear weapons.
Sergei Tretyakov also exposed the Russian warfare program known as Active Measures. The program uses misinformation, propaganda, hoaxes, and political persecution to influence world events. Active Measures has been called the “heart and soul of Soviet intelligence,” and is being used to discredit the United States. Some have speculated that Russia orchestrated the Edward Snowden media leak in order to create anger in the United States and Europe, specifically Germany. On June 13, 2010, Sergei Tretyakov died at his house in the United States. The medical examiner reported that he suffocated after choking on a piece of meat. However, rumors persist that he was assassinated by the SVR.


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2015 - THE FUTURE IS NOW HERE '' We have chosen to stand for PEACE''

THE FUTURE IS NOW HERE
Weeks ago, it was a question of what 2015 has for Nigeria with so many speculations that consist of both BLOODSHED and PEACE.
Like it has always
been man has the power to choose the right thing or the wrong thing, it is the ability to choose the right thing that matter most. NIGERIANS, 2015 is here let us stand for PEACE AND UNITY.
#NoMoreViolenceInNigeria





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