These are in no particular order. Some did not make the cut but do deserve an honorable mention. Did I forget any? Leave me a comment down below! Now let’s dive straight into it!
We all need fuel in our lives and when a cyberattack is placed well, it can totally disrupt the infrastructure that carries our lifeline. Such an attack could be seen when a ransomware gang called Darkside set its sights for colonial pipelines in July of 2021. The reason the whole pipeline got shut down might not be what you think though.
The Colonial pipeline spans 5500 miles or 8,850 kilometers and it consists of two pipes. This alone can carry 3 million barrels of fuel every single day between Texas and New York.
The Colonial Pipeline Company which is situated in Alpharetta, Georgia, was founded in 1961 but construction of the pipeline itself did not start until 1962.
A major cyberattack disrupted the operations of the company in 2021 which has major consequences. A temporary fuel shortage arose because The Colonial Pipeline Company could not bill its customers anymore. Looking at a potential loss of billions of dollars, the Colonial Pipeline Company did the only thing it could do and shut down the delivery of refined oil products.
This caused a nationwide shortage of fuel quickly and people scrambled to the gas stations to snag the last drop of gas. Sometimes patrons would wait for hours in line while waiting for a gas station that ran dry ages ago.
The Colonial Pipeline Company eventually folded and delivered 75 bitcoins (About 4 million dollars at the time of the hack) to the ransomware gang. They have since offered a reward to bring the DarkSide gang to justice. This comes in the form of 100 000$.
Not many of you might have heard of this company as it usually operates in the background as an MSP(Multi-service provider) hoster. Kaseya is a widely recognized and used name in the industry as it is used by companies ranging from small in size to complete government departments.
When it was hit with REvil in the beginning of July this spelled disaster for many organizations as their systems got compromised one by one. In total over 1500 organizations got struck by this monster. The ransomware demanded anything between $45 000 and $15 mil!
The creator of the ransomware offered to release a 70$ mil universal decryptor but was soon caught, putting an end to his ransomware spree but not before leaving substantial damage for some organizations in its footsteps.
At a certain point, it was even speculated Putin was involved in the creation of this ransomware due to its origin seems to be Russia. It was also suspected U.S. agencies were involved in the attacks at a certain point but as of July 22, Kesaya finally released the word that a security firm had released a universal decryptor.
After a few days of tense decrypting, it seemed like a large population of Kesaya’s customers could sigh a breath of relief but as far as the US homeland’s CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) is concerned, this is far from over. They are busy warning MSPs (Multi-service providers) and their clients about the risks and even released guidelines for both sides of the attack.
https://www.cisa.gov/stopransomware/ransomware-guide
The popular streaming platform, Twitch, is growing like a spear. The influencers that garnish it have been treated well and compensated as well for providing the content. This new form of entertainment is quickly gaining traction with a mainstream audience, but with that comes some unwanted attention as well.
When all eyes are on you, you can not afford a single mistake and unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. Sparking this whole nightmare was a very simple misconfiguration of a server. The moment this exploit was known, it was used to steal very valuable data from the company, including all of its source code.
You’d think that having your source code leaked would be bad enough in and of its own but it gets worse. Besides the source code, all of the creator's revenue data was stolen and leaked publicly. The most valuable asset Twitch had, their creators, were not happy, to say the least. The donation data, bit gifts (bits are a small form of currency viewers can use to donate to their favorite creators), and ad revenue.
In total, 128GB of data was leaked which made a big dent in the public image of the company from which they thankfully recovered, but not before having to endure huge backlash for this seemingly innocent misconfiguration.