Hacking has become big news over the past decade, challenging our views of how impenetrable big business is and bringing the threat of a security breach to organisations large and small. From the 92 million usernames that were stolen and sold by an AOL engineer, to hacks of huge brands like TK Maxx, Playstation and even the American military, there are few who have managed to avoid attempts to illegally obtain their valuable data since 2004. Over the past year the situation has been no different – in fact many have commented on an acceleration of hacking attempts (in the final quarter of 2013 hacker attacks on websites went up 75%). Below are some of the most notable hacks of 2014 – so far…
EBay – one of the most recognisable brands in the world, the auction site was bound to become a target for hackers at some point given the enormous amount of data it holds. In May of this year the company revealed that between February and March 2014 hackers had managed to steal 233 million user records, including names, passwords and physical address details.
Evernote and Feedly – the huge note taking app Evernote was hit with a denial of service hack this year that completely disabled its service on 10th June. Although it was back up and running within hours, the next day Feedly (with which Evernote works largely in tandem) was also hit. The news aggregation service managed to deal with one denial of service attack and was then immediately hit with two more, resulting in no service for almost four days. Although not much is known about the hackers, they did attempt to obtain money from Feedly to stop the attack although this ransom wasn’t paid.
Dominos – another huge name to be hit by a ransom hack, Dominos found itself on the other end of an attempt to extort money by the hacking group Rex Mundi. The group wanted $40,000 in exchange for Belgian and French customer records that included everything from address details to preferred pizza toppings. The group threatened to publish the information they had online – this never happened but it’s not known whether that’s because the ransom demand was paid or the hack was defeated.
If you’re concerned about the security of your business data, ITC Secure Networking offers managed security services for organisations of all sizes. We are a leading UK network and security integrator, providing organisations with assured IT – see our website for more information and contact details.
