Cyber Security was a paramount concern for many government and private firms in this year. And so here’s the list of top data breaches which took place in 2016 prepared by our editorial team.
Yahoo Breach- Yahoo leads the pack in the data breach list of this year. In September 2016, Yahoo reported that more than 500 million user credentials were stolen by cyber criminals. In December this year, Yahoo Tech reported that more than 1 billion user credentials were stolen from its database. The data includes some critical information as well. Security experts at the company came to the conclusion that an August 2013 cyber attack on its database led to the cyber espionage of this year.
SnapChat- In March this year, SnapChat found that information related to more than 700 current and former Snapchat employees had their data stolen through a phishing scam. It was later discovered in the probe that two Snapchat employees clicked on a malicious email link which led to the data breach. The data which was stolen includes social security numbers and payroll data. Though, the number might not look as the biggest, it happens to prove that no tech company in the world is safe from cyber crooks.
National Payment Corporation of India- In October this year, the National Payment Corporation of India reported on an official note that data related to more than 3.2 million debit cards were stolen by cyber crooks. This was concluded by the payment corporation when it received numerous complaints from users who reported that money was being debited from their bank accounts for transactions made in a fraudulent way. Later the Financial institution launched a probe which revealed that the debit card details were stolen from one of its databases which were being operated by a third party. Immediately, all the cards were canceled and replaced by new ones ever since.
Russia targets email providers- In this year, cyber criminals from Russian managed to obtain usernames and passwords of more than 270 million email users. This includes accounts from Mail.ru, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. Till this date, it remains unclear on how the cyber criminals obtained information. Strangely, some top media sources are holding Russia as a culprit for all cyber attacks which have/are taking place on public and private firms residing in UK and USA.
Wonder, how much truth exists in these accusations!
