Major Hacks of the Year 2015

Chances are that you didn't go a few days without hearing the word "cyber" last year. It's for good reason. 2015 was a year of data breaches and hacks, impacting the public and private sector alike.

Android Stagefright

Our personal devices weren't safe. Researchers discovered a massive vulnerability in the Android operating system affecting millions of devices. The vulnerability, known as Stagefright, was contained deep in the code that handles processing and displaying images. The especially horrific part was that this vulnerability could be triggered simply by sending the victim a specially crafted text message. Google has since released a patch fixing the vulnerability, but many devices could still remain affected and unpatched.

Botnet of Things

The Internet! It's everywhere! More and more household (and non-household) items are being connected to the Internet, a phenomenon known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Unfortunately, with this explosion of Internet-connected devices came equally explosive security vulnerabilities. Hackers demonstrated the ability to remotely control Jeep vehicles, taking over the steering wheel and even disabling the brakes.

Hacking Team Hacked

There was a lot of schadenfreude at the news that the Hacking Team, a known purveyor of spying tools to oppressive regimes, was itself targeted by hackers. The notorious Italy-based spyware vendor had its own servers compromised, with attackers releasing over 400GB of internal data and communications with clients. The releases included revelations of dealings with regimes targeting activists and journalists, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Equation Group

Nation-state actors aren't just using off-the-shelf spying tools by outfits like Hacking Team, but are busily developing their own. Researchers at Kaspersky Labs discovered a family of malware, developed by theEquation Group, that could insert itself in the firmware of a number of different brands of hard drives. This malware could then easily persist on that machine, reinstalling itself from a secret sector on the hard drive even if the operating system was completely reinstalled. Due to the complexity of the malware, it is likely that the Equation Group is state-sponsored, and Reuters quoted anonymous former employees of NSA who claimed that the malware was directly developed by the Agency.

State-sponsored malware and attack campaigns highlight the terrifying capabilities of nation-state actors and reinforce the importance of security best practices and rejecting backdoors.

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