It’s estimated that 96% of all corporations have been hacked – and the list includes a surprising number of well-known names. Here’s our round-up of famous firms (and faces) who have been targeted by the career cybercriminals this year:
British Airways, Merseyside Police, Wirral Council, The Conservative Party, Crimestoppers (and 300 others) – all forced offline by just one hacker, Ian Sullivan, who was sentenced to eight months in jail this year for his wild spree of cyberchaos.
British Gas – even with tight security, cybercriminals can still find a way in. Over 2000 customers had personal details published online by hackers earlier this year.
JD Wetherspoon – it was recently revealed that a case of hacking led to data theft at the popular pub chain.
Washington State Department of Correction – resulting in the early release of prisoners!
V-Tech – even toymakers aren’t immune. Hackers stole data on 200,000 preschoolers in this sting.
The US Prison Service – the information from 70 million phone calls from inmates went astray, and a lot of it ended up in the hands of journalists.
CIA – Their director John Brennan discovered hackers had broken into his private email account.
FBI – The CIA hackers also managed to get into a law enforcement portal here.
Donald Trump – Some people might admire their cheek – hackers fed malware into the wannabee US President’s hotel chain and stole all kinds of credit card data.
Patreon – Crowdfunding is big business and don’t the hackers know it. Patreon’s whole database was breached – and made public – by hackers this year.
Ashley Madison – 37 million patrons of the cheater’s website were mortified to find their data had been exposed. You can only imagine the hackers feeling as if they had the moral high ground here!
Hacking Team – Ironically, this Italian security and surveillance company had its whole network breached and posted online by – yes – hackers.
CVS – The huge US pharmacy chain was hit by hackers who are thought to have got in through its photo-processing website.
TalkTalk – several times, and most famously by teenagers…
T-Mobile – …a similar problem was experienced by TalkTalk’s fellow telecoms giant…
Carphone Warehouse – …and the attack on this cellphone retailer was UK’s biggest breach of 2015. 2.4million customers had data stolen, including 90,000 cases of encrypted credit card data theft.
… and finally…
someone tried to pay Raspberry Pi to spread malware; very sensibly the Pi’s response to that was a huge cyber-raspberry…