The more we live our lives online, the more important internet security becomes. But it’s not just home computers that are susceptible to a virus or an online attack – big multinational companies have been the victims of some of the worst hacks.
Corporate hacking happens for many reasons. Some hackers are criminally motivated, others do it for the fame, and some are exacting revenge. Whatever the reason for a corporate hack though, they generally affect millions of people and cost millions of dollars to fix.
1. Web Giants Floored By Teen Hacker
Back in early 2000, most IT Managers were simply relieved that the Millennium Bug had come to nothing. Little did they know that a Canadian teen had something far worse up his sleeve.
Michael Calce, aka Mafiaboy, took down some of the world’s biggest websites with a fairly simple hack. Using a DDoS, or distributed denial of service attack, he deluged the sites with so many requests that the servers couldn’t cope with them and the sites shut down completely. His first victim was Yahoo, which was the world’s leading search engine at the time. He later hacked eBay, CNN, Amazon and Dell, although Dell didn’t admit to the breach until sometime later.
These attacks are estimated to have cost around US $1.2 billion and exposed how vulnerable websites are to hackers. Politicians took note and US President Bill Clinton called a summit on cyber crime.
Calce believes that many of the internet security issues he exposed in 2000 still exist. He discusses this in a CNN interview.
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