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The 2024 CrowdStrike Incident: A Global Cybersecurity Breakdown September 01, 2024

Overview

On July 19, 2024, a critical failure in CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software resulted in one of the largest global cybersecurity disasters of recent years. An erroneous update caused over 8.5 million Windows 10 and 11 systems to crash, producing blue screens of death (BSOD) and disrupting operations across critical sectors like transportation, finance, and government services. The financial impact was staggering, with damages exceeding $10 billion globally. While CrowdStrike moved quickly to release a patch, the incident required manual intervention to restore many affected systems, extending the recovery period for weeks.

Google Cloud Account Deletion Incident – May 2024 May 01, 2024

Overview

In May 2024, Google Cloud experienced a major incident where a customer’s account was inadvertently deleted due to an internal process error. This mistake resulted in a significant disruption, leading to two weeks of downtime for the affected customer. Critical services and data were lost, with Google Cloud scrambling to recover the account. The incident highlighted the risks of centralized cloud infrastructures and raised concerns about the potential consequences of operational errors on business continuity.

Mother of All Breaches (MOAB): A Colossal Data Leak January 22, 2024

Overview

The year 2024 started with the unprecedented cybersecurity event dubbed the “Mother of All Breaches” (MOAB), which involved the leak of 12 terabytes of information, comprising over 26 billion records. This breach was a compilation of data from various platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Dropbox.

Bank of America and Infosys McCamish Systems Breach: Cascading Risks in Financial Services November 03, 2023

Overview

A cyberattack in 2023 targeting Infosys McCamish Systems, a subsidiary of Infosys, led to a significant breach affecting Bank of America. Sensitive information including names, social security numbers, and account details of 57,028 individuals were exposed due to this third-party breach.

Massive Ransomware Attack Disrupts Boeing Operations October 16, 2023

Overview

In October 2023, aerospace giant Boeing became the latest victim of a sophisticated ransomware attack. Criminals claim to have stolen massive amounts of sensitive data, disrupting operations and causing significant concern across the global aerospace industry.

The ICMR Data Breach: A Wake-Up Call for Medical Research Security October 09, 2023

Overview

On October 9, 2023, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) faced a massive data breach, with personal details of 815 million residents exposed. This breach, one of the largest in medical research history, involved data from the ICMR’s Covid-testing database offered for sale on the dark web, including sensitive information such as names, ages, addresses, and government ID numbers.

23andMe Data Breach Exposes Millions: A Closer Look October 02, 2023

Overview

In October 2023, genetic testing company 23andMe experienced a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 6.9 million users. This breach was primarily due to a credential stuffing attack, where hackers used previously compromised credentials to access user accounts.

The DarkBeam Data Exposure: A Lesson in Configuration Security September 18, 2023

Overview

In September 2023, digital risk protection company DarkBeam suffered a major security lapse, exposing 3.8 billion records due to a misconfigured Elasticsearch and Kibana interface. This breach not only exposed user emails and passwords from previous data breaches but also highlighted the risks of improper security configurations.

WhatsApp Outage – October 2022: Global Messaging Disrupted for 2 Hours October 25, 2022

Overview

On October 25, 2022, WhatsApp, the global messaging service owned by Meta, went down for nearly two hours. Over 2.8 million users were unable to send or receive messages, affecting personal and business communications.

Spotify Outage – March 2022: 2.9 Million Users Left Without Music March 08, 2022

Overview

On March 8, 2022, Spotify experienced a global outage, disrupting service for over 2.9 million users. The outage lasted approximately two hours and affected users’ ability to stream music and podcasts on the platform.

Amazon Web Services Outage – December 2021: When the Cloud Went Dark December 07, 2021

Overview

On December 7, 2021, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant outage that lasted over six hours. This affected major services globally, including Netflix, Disney+, Slack, and Venmo, among many others, all of which depend on AWS’s cloud infrastructure.

Facebook Outage – October 2021: How Configuration Errors Brought Down the Social Media Giant October 04, 2021

Overview

On October 4, 2021, Facebook and its platforms — Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger — suffered a global outage that lasted approximately six hours. The outage was caused by a faulty configuration change in the backbone routers responsible for coordinating network traffic between Facebook’s data centers.

Google Services Outage – December 2020 December 14, 2020

Overview

On December 14, 2020, Google services, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Drive, went offline globally for over an hour. This outage affected billions of users worldwide, disrupting personal, educational, and business activities.

CenturyLink's 2020 Outage – Global Disruption August 30, 2020

Overview

On August 30, 2020, CenturyLink, a major global ISP, suffered a massive outage that lasted nearly five hours, affecting websites and services worldwide, including Cloudflare, Google, and OpenTable. This outage had a wide blast radius, affecting numerous other ISPs connected via CenturyLink’s peering network.

Wikipedia DDoS Attack – September 2019: 9 Hours of Disruption September 06, 2019

Overview

On September 6, 2019, Wikipedia suffered a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which disrupted access to its servers for almost nine hours. The attack overwhelmed Wikipedia’s infrastructure with an enormous amount of traffic, making the service unavailable across many regions.

Cloudflare Outage – June 2019: A BGP Route Leak Takes Down Major Websites June 24, 2019

Overview

On June 24, 2019, a significant internet outage impacted services worldwide, including major websites like Discord, Facebook, and Reddit. The outage was caused by a BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) route leak, which created a ripple effect across the global internet, affecting approximately 15% of Cloudflare’s traffic.

Google+ 2018 Data Breach – 52.5 Million Users Exposed December 10, 2018

Overview

Google+ suffered two significant data breaches in 2018. The first, in October, affected 500,000 users, followed by a second in December, impacting 52.5 million users. These breaches exposed users’ names, email addresses, and birthdates to third-party apps.

Chegg’s 2018 Data Breach – Impacting 40 Million Users September 25, 2018

Overview

In September 2018, Chegg, the education technology company, disclosed a significant data breach affecting 40 million users. An unauthorized party accessed the company’s database between April and September of that year, compromising users’ names, addresses, emails, and passwords.