The cyber-attacks that marked the years 2016 and 2017

Atlas Magazine goes back over some of the events that badly affected businesses, public administrations and other organizations in 2016 and 2017.

The cyber-attacks that marked the year 2016

The year 2016 was marked by the hacking of the Swift interbank messaging system. This attack, which occurred in February, caused 72 million EUR (79 million USD) in losses.

In March, the Petya ransomware appeared. In a few hours, hackers accessed files of thousands of computers. All data were encrypted by hackers who demanded ransom in exchange for their unlocking.

These attacks are just the beginning of a long series of hacks. In May, 117 million e-mails and passwords from the Linkedin professional network were reached.
During the same month, two other social networks Tumblr and MySpace were the pirates'victims. In September, 500 000 million Yahoo user accounts were also stolen.

The most important cyber attacks of the year 2017

In May 2017, the new WannaCry ransomware attacked 300 000 computers in more than 150 countries in just a few hours. Hackers demanded a ransom to unlock the machines. Several multinational companies as well as government structures were victims of the cyber-attack. Among these are Vodafone, Renault, FedEx or the British health services as well as the Russian Ministry of the Interior.

One month after WannaCry, in June 2017, the new NotPetya virus started doing some damage. The insurer MAIF was among the victims of this ransomware. The hackers were able to access the servers and fraudulently sent fake mails both to the employees of the hacked companies and to their contacts. The virus began to spread in Russia and Ukraine before spreading to the rest of the world. More than 2 000 companies have been hit by this virus, including SNCF in France, the advertising group WPP and Merck laboratory.