It is no secret that the emergence of the Internet and various technologies has made it possible for many companies to revolutionize themselves, going from being traditional to innovative and digital. However, it has brought many consequences such as cyber-attacks.
Not everything is rosy, despite the existence of technologies and all kinds of tools that bring value to companies, there are others that threaten the latter, through organized attacks against their computer system in order to block it, damage it or obtain information.
There are no vacations for cybercrime, in fact it has been on the rise for several years and there are no trends to reduce it, quite the contrary, in fact the COVID-19 pandemic only made things worse.
4 powerful cyberattacks in Q1 of 2021
1.Channel Nine (9News Australia)
The Australian channel was the target of a massive cyber-attack, which caused the interruption of its transmission. This was reported by the TV Blackbox portal (specializing in TV industry news).
9News was preparing to broadcast the next issue of the investigative program, «In Investigation», when the cyber-attack occurred.
In the same vein, the 9News Australia team, expressed on Twitter the following: «Whether this is criminal or foreign government sabotage is currently under investigation, but it is clear that this attack could expose a vulnerability at a national level».
2. CNA Financial
CNA, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, was cyberattacked via a variant of the Phoenix CryptoLocker malware.
On March 21, cybercriminals deployed a ransomware program on the CNA network that encrypted 15,000 devices.
The malware also encrypted the computers of remote employees who were connected to the corporate VPN throughout the attack.
3. Florida Oldsmar Water System
According to the u-gob.com article, we were able to learn that cybercriminals hacked the computer system of the water treatment plant in Florida, trying to poison the water of approximately 15,000 residents, with the increase of sodium hydroxide content in the water more than 100 times, (normal 100 ppm to 11100 ppm).
How did it happen?
The incident took place on the morning of February 5, 2021. The cybercriminals gained remote access to an employee’s computer via TeamViewer and then took over the station’s internal computer control systems.
4. Massive attack on Microsoft Exchange servers
At least 60,000 companies and organizations worldwide have been attacked by a hacker due to a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server.
This resulted in more than 30,000 emails from U.S. government and commercial organizations being hacked, according to the KrebsOnSecurity report.
According to the tech giant, the vulnerabilities allowed Chinese hackers to gain access to email accounts and install malware to access servers at any time.
Want to continue to expand on this interesting content? In our next article, you can find out more about other relevant cyberattacks that occurred in the first sadly of 2021.