In the world of the Internet, as in everyday life, an open door does not always mean that everything that is carried out behind it, and a closed one does not always guarantee peace of mind.
Our today's story is about several major data leaks and financial thefts in the history of the World Wide Web.
The tragic story of a young talent
One of the darkest pages in the history of hacking is associated with the name of the child prodigy Jonathan Joseph James. A fifteen-year-old teenager hacked into the networks of his own school, the telecommunications company Bell South, bypassed the protection of NASA servers and stole a lot of valuable information, including the source codes of the ISS, and infiltrating the servers of the Ministry of Defense of his native country is also on James's list of crimes.
The young man himself has repeatedly spoken out that he does not trust the government and that users themselves are to blame for the vulnerabilities of their computers, in particular, James stated that ignoring software updates is a direct path to being hacked one day. Someone had already hacked outdated programs, he thought. The hacker treated the developments of large Ministries and companies with a degree of contempt, believing that they were overestimated.
The damage caused by Jonathan's attacks was estimated at millions of dollars, and his story ended tragically, in 2008, at the age of 24, the hacker committed suicide.
Many have linked it to the massive hacker attacks of 2007, in particular the theft of credit card information from millions of customers of the TJX retail chain, but James denied this. Because of those events and the sad ending, many believe that in fact the hacker could have been killed.
The collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange
Not so long ago, the rapid jump in the value of bitcoin excited netizens.
Albeit belatedly, I would like to recall the history of the bankrupt Mount Gox exchange, which went bankrupt as a result of several hacker attacks. As of August 2013, about 47% of all transactions in the Bitcoin network were made through this platform, and the volume of trading in dollars exceeded 80 percent of the global turnover of cryptocurrencies, in January 2014 the service ranked third in terms of trading volume on the market, which indicates its value in crypto trading at that time.
In fact, it was not only hacking, Mount Gox had neither version control, which makes it difficult to track code vulnerabilities, nor an accounting system that allowed it to track financial transactions, which is just an example of an βopen doorβ. The attack on the vulnerability, discovered in 2014, was only a matter of time. As a result of the actions of malefactors, which lasted about 3 years, the exchange lost over half a billion dollars.
Insane financial and reputational costs completely destroyed Mount Gox, and subsequent transactions brought down the bitcoin rate. As a result, due to the actions of hackers, a huge number of people lost their savings stored in virtual currency. As Mark Karpeles (CEO of Mt.Gox) later argued in a Tokyo court, "technical issues with the platform have opened up access for fraudulent withdrawal of our clients' funds."
The identity of all the criminals was not established, but in 2018 Alexander Vinnik was arrested, he was charged with laundering money obtained by criminal means in the amount of "from four to nine billion dollars." It is in such amounts (depending on the current exchange rate) that 630 bitcoins that disappeared as a result of the collapse of Mt.Gox are estimated.
Hacking Adobe Systems
In 2013, the largest hacker theft of user data took place.
The developer Adobe Systems reported that the criminals stole the source code of the software and the data of almost 150 million people.
The delicacy of the situation was created by the company itself, the first signs of damage within the system were discovered 2 weeks before the hack, but Adobe experts considered them unrelated to hackers. The company later released smoothed loss figures, citing a lack of ironclad evidence. As a result, hackers stole the data of almost 3 million bank cards of users from 150 million accounts, some concerns were caused by the theft of the code, having the source codes, the attackers could easily reproduce the expensive software.
Everything turned out to be a slight fright, for some unknown reason, the hackers did not use the information received. There are many ambiguities and understatements in history, information that differs tenfold depending on the time and source of information.
Adobe escaped with public censure and the cost of additional protection, otherwise, if the criminals decided to use the data obtained, the losses of the company and users would be enormous.
hackers moralists
The Impact Team destroyed the websites of Avid Life Media (ALM).
In most cases, cybercriminals steal money or personal data of users for use or resale, the motives of the hacker group The Impact Team were different. The most famous case of these hackers was the destruction of sites owned by Avid Life Media. Three of the firm's sites, including the Ashley Madison portal, were a meeting place for people interested in adultery.
The specific focus of the sites has already been the subject of controversy, but the fact remains that the servers of Ashley Madison, Cougar Life and Established Men stored a huge amount of personal information of people who cheated on their soul mates. The situation is also interesting because the ALM management was also not averse to hacking competitors, in the correspondence of the CEO and CTO of the company, a hacking of their direct competitor Nerve was mentioned. Six months earlier, ALM wanted to partner with Nerve and buy out their website. The Impact Team demanded that the site owners completely stop their activities, otherwise all user data will be in the public domain.
Avid Life Media decided that the hackers were bluffing and ignored them. When the declared time, 30 days, expired, The Impact Team fulfilled the promise in full - the data of over 30 million users appeared on the network, containing their names, passwords, email addresses, external data, correspondence histories. This led to a flurry of divorce proceedings, high-profile scandals, and even perhaps ... several suicides.
Whether the motives of the hackers were pure is hard to say, because they did not ask for money. In any case, such justice is unlikely to have cost human lives.
Seeing no boundaries in the pursuit of UFOs
Gary McKinnon broke the servers of NASA, the Department of Defense, the Navy and the US Air Force.
I would like to end our story on a funny note, they say that βa bad head does not give rest to handsβ, Gary McKinnon, one of the hackers who encroached on NASA, this saying is fully suitable. The reason why an attacker hacked into the security systems of almost a hundred computers with classified data is amazing, Gary is convinced that the US government and scientists are hiding data from citizens about aliens, as well as alternative energy sources and other technologies that are useful to ordinary people, but not profitable for corporations .
In 2015, Gary McKinnon was interviewed by Richard D. Hall on RichPlanet TV.
He said that for several months he collected information from NASA servers sitting at home and using a simple Windows computer and got access to files and folders containing information about the existence of a secret state government program for interplanetary flight and space exploration, anti-gravity technologies, free energy and this is far away. non-exhaustive list of information.
McKinnon is a true master of his craft and a sincere dreamer, but was the UFO chase worth the trial? Due to the losses caused to the US government, Gary was forced to remain in the UK and live in fear of extradition. For a long time he was under the personal patronage of Theresa May, who at that time held the post of Minister of the Interior of Great Britain, she by direct order forbade him to be transferred to the US authorities. (By the way, who believes in the philanthropy of politicians? Maybe McKinnon really is a carrier of valuable information) Let's hope that the hacker will always be so lucky, because in America he faces a 70-year prison sentence.
Most likely, somewhere there are hackers doing their job out of a desire to help someone or a love of art, alas, such activities are always a double-edged sword. Too often, the pursuit of justice or other people's secrets endangers people's well-being. Most often, the victims are people who have nothing to do with hackers.
If you are interested in any of the topics raised in the article, write in the comments, perhaps we can reveal it in more detail in one of the following materials.
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Source: habr.com