5 Real Life Cybercrimes We Think the CSI Cyber Crew Would Crack: It takes a hacker to fight a hacker
Posted on Feb 13, 2015 | 08:35am
Though the kinds of high-end cybercrime we see on our television and movie screens can seem like Hollywood taking liberties with the truth, we live in a high-tech world where computer crime is very much a part of our everyday lives. But you don't have to take our word for it — just read up on this list of entirely real cybercrimes, any of which would be worthy of a movie plot.
Computer Viruses That Spread Unchecked
A computer virus exists to replicate itself and spread. When we're talking computers, a virus tends to exploit a software vulnerability in order to jump from system to system where it installs itself and continues its attempts to spread. Before we were all hyper-aware of computer security and antivirus programs became common installations on every system, viruses didn't even have to cause damage to your computer to make them big problems.
Take the Melissa virus, which launched in 1999. Once it was on a computer, Melissa would email itself to the first 50 contacts in the address book — and when an unwary reader opened that email and clicked on the attachment, Melissa would install itself and send another 50 emails. Despite being relatively harmless, Melissa spread quickly and created enough internet traffic to slow or crash corporate email servers world-wide, with damages estimated at $80 million.
Building on Melissa's success, 2000's Love Bug acted similarly, but instead of only emailing the first 50 contacts in an address book, it emailed all of them. After Melissa, you might think it would be a hard sell to convince email users to click an attachment, but Love Bug convinced readers to "Kindly check the attached love letter from me!" That simple pronouncement worked: the virus shut down 1/10th of the world's email servers, infected as many as 45 million computers, and caused billions in damages.
Despite tighter security, viruses can still run rampant — though they've had to get smarter to do so. 2008's Conficker quietly took over computers turning infected machines into a large botnet, controlled by the hacker. The total cost of this virus is the priciest yet, with as much as $9.1 billion in damages.
Los Angeles Traffic Signals Run Wild
There are some things we count on in our daily lives, like street lights working. But during a 2006 strike by Los Angeles traffic engineers, two strikers decided to show the city just what bad traffic really meant by hacking into the city's traffic system to reprogram the timing on the lights. By programming long red lights at busy intersections, the two managed to cause major gridlock... and proved just how much trouble hacking into traffic systems could cause.
Cyberwarfare Strikes at Iran's Nuclear Program
We think of computer viruses being for computers, but this 2010 virus infected a particular type of industrial controllers: specifically, those at work in uranium enrichment facilities in Iran. This virus was designed to change the way the facility's centrifuges spun, causing them to fail.
Likely part of an organized plan to disrupt Iran's nuclear efforts, Stuxnet probably won't be the last virus to hit unconventional targets.
Data Breaches Hand Your Info to Hackers
You can hardly turn around these days without hearing about another major corporate data breach that's left your passwords or credit card information available to hackers. Target's breach in 2013 caught the public eye as infected point of sale systems grabbed information on every card swiped in stores — affecting 40 million cardholders and costing Target $148 million, plus a notable drop in future earnings.
It wasn't the first such incident and it's unlikely to be the last — in 2014, Home Depot followed Target's example with a point of sale hack that stole 60 million card numbers and went on for months before being discovered.
Tabloid Photos Go Digital With Celebgate
The financial cost, if there was one, is hard to calculate for 2014's celebrity photo hacking commonly known as "Celebgate" — but celebrities' right to privacy privacy was certainly violated. An attack on a cloud photo service targeted celebrity accounts, gaining hackers access to personal photos and videos from the individuals' phones, which are automatically backed up online.
Over 100 celebrities were hacked, with nude photos spread across the internet.
Is cybercrime just something we see on TV and in movies? No way. But CSI: Cyber explores those themes closely, with a team of hacker-catchers and former hackers working together to protect people’s lives and data.
CSI: Cyber premieres Wednesday, March 4 at 10/9c.
Computer Viruses That Spread Unchecked
A computer virus exists to replicate itself and spread. When we're talking computers, a virus tends to exploit a software vulnerability in order to jump from system to system where it installs itself and continues its attempts to spread. Before we were all hyper-aware of computer security and antivirus programs became common installations on every system, viruses didn't even have to cause damage to your computer to make them big problems.
Take the Melissa virus, which launched in 1999. Once it was on a computer, Melissa would email itself to the first 50 contacts in the address book — and when an unwary reader opened that email and clicked on the attachment, Melissa would install itself and send another 50 emails. Despite being relatively harmless, Melissa spread quickly and created enough internet traffic to slow or crash corporate email servers world-wide, with damages estimated at $80 million.
Building on Melissa's success, 2000's Love Bug acted similarly, but instead of only emailing the first 50 contacts in an address book, it emailed all of them. After Melissa, you might think it would be a hard sell to convince email users to click an attachment, but Love Bug convinced readers to "Kindly check the attached love letter from me!" That simple pronouncement worked: the virus shut down 1/10th of the world's email servers, infected as many as 45 million computers, and caused billions in damages.
Despite tighter security, viruses can still run rampant — though they've had to get smarter to do so. 2008's Conficker quietly took over computers turning infected machines into a large botnet, controlled by the hacker. The total cost of this virus is the priciest yet, with as much as $9.1 billion in damages.
Los Angeles Traffic Signals Run Wild
There are some things we count on in our daily lives, like street lights working. But during a 2006 strike by Los Angeles traffic engineers, two strikers decided to show the city just what bad traffic really meant by hacking into the city's traffic system to reprogram the timing on the lights. By programming long red lights at busy intersections, the two managed to cause major gridlock... and proved just how much trouble hacking into traffic systems could cause.
Cyberwarfare Strikes at Iran's Nuclear Program
We think of computer viruses being for computers, but this 2010 virus infected a particular type of industrial controllers: specifically, those at work in uranium enrichment facilities in Iran. This virus was designed to change the way the facility's centrifuges spun, causing them to fail.
Likely part of an organized plan to disrupt Iran's nuclear efforts, Stuxnet probably won't be the last virus to hit unconventional targets.
Data Breaches Hand Your Info to Hackers
You can hardly turn around these days without hearing about another major corporate data breach that's left your passwords or credit card information available to hackers. Target's breach in 2013 caught the public eye as infected point of sale systems grabbed information on every card swiped in stores — affecting 40 million cardholders and costing Target $148 million, plus a notable drop in future earnings.
It wasn't the first such incident and it's unlikely to be the last — in 2014, Home Depot followed Target's example with a point of sale hack that stole 60 million card numbers and went on for months before being discovered.
Tabloid Photos Go Digital With Celebgate
The financial cost, if there was one, is hard to calculate for 2014's celebrity photo hacking commonly known as "Celebgate" — but celebrities' right to privacy privacy was certainly violated. An attack on a cloud photo service targeted celebrity accounts, gaining hackers access to personal photos and videos from the individuals' phones, which are automatically backed up online.
Over 100 celebrities were hacked, with nude photos spread across the internet.
Is cybercrime just something we see on TV and in movies? No way. But CSI: Cyber explores those themes closely, with a team of hacker-catchers and former hackers working together to protect people’s lives and data.
CSI: Cyber premieres Wednesday, March 4 at 10/9c.