The huge Optus cyberattack is only the latest data breach and hack that has disrupted modern society.
Over past years, businesses, governments, individuals and even militaries have been targeted by hackers.
From being the the realm of tech-savvy and curious teenagers, hacking today is the arena of government spies, professional thieves and soldiers of fortune.
Today, it’s all about the money, with the development of ransomware offering hackers the chance to reap millions or billions of dollars from their crimes.
Here is a look at some of the most notorious cyber attacks in history.
1990: Broke into phone lines to win a Porsche
Hacker Kevin Poulsen rigged a Los Angeles radio station’s phone system to win a Porsche, only to be arrested afterward.
He successfully locked out other callers but was later arrested for the crime and sentenced to five years in prison.
1999: Teenager breached Pentagon, NASA systems
Jonathan James, 15, broke into a Pentagon computer system that monitors threats from nuclear weapons.
He also hacked into NASA computers that supported the International Space Station, intercepting 3300 government emails and obtaining stolen passwords.
James, known on the Internet as “cOmrade”, was sentenced to six months in jail.
2000: High school student causes chaos
A Canadian high schooler, known as Mafiaboy, launched a distributed denial-of-service attack on commercial sites, including major companies CNN, eBay, and Amazon.
The hacks resulted in an estimated $US1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) of damage.
2007: Entire country targeted by Russian hackers
A decision by the Estonian government to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial from central Tallinn to a military cemetery sparked a diplomatic spat with its powerful neighbour Russia.
Just as the removal works started, Estonia became the target of what was at the time the biggest cyberattack against a single country.
The Estonian government called the incident an act of cyberwarfare and blamed Russia for it.
2009: Tech giant blames China
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Google and a dozen other technology companies were hit with a targeted cyberattack that emanated from China.
Google went public about the attack, said that some of its intellectual property had been stolen, and pulled its search engine servers out of China soon after.
China has repeatedly and vehemently denied any connection to the attacks.
2013: Billions of search engine users compromised
Yahoo’s epic data breach in affected 3 billion people in total.
The company revealed in 2017 that the accounts for every single customer during that time had been breached, including users of Tumblr and Flickr.
2014: Intimate details of celebrities exposed
A group of hackers exposed the intimate photos belonging to celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst.
The cybercriminals posed as members of Apple’s online security team and sent emails to the victims asking for their usernames and passwords.
2016: Popular swinger site breached twice
The initial hack exposed the sexual secrets of 3.5 million subscribers of alternative dating site Adult FriendFinder.
But within months, a second data breached the details of 410 million users.
The company scrambled to calm down users who were worried that their listed sexual preferences would go public.
2020: Fears over Aussie beer shortage (2020)
There were fears that Queensland’s iconic XXXX beer would be in short supply as its owner Lion Nathan grappled with a major cybersecurity breach.
It also sparked fears over the availability of Furphy and James Squire beers, along with Dairy Farmers milk and Farmers Union iced coffee and flavoured milks.
– Reported with CNN
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