Top 10 Most Devastating Computer Hacks

On March 26, 1999, a 30-year-old man named David L. Smith unleashed what I think we can all call a "monster." Named after a stripper he met in Florida, the Melissa Virus acted like an intelligent virus, spreading to other computers through a Word document or an email. It started by corrupting Microsoft Outlook and sending itself to 50 people in the user's contact list. Once opened, it would send itself again, repeating the cycle.

In the end, it was estimated that $80 million in damage was done, causing companies like Microsoft to shut down their connections temporarily. David eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison but served only 20 months.

Spamhaus is considered one of the most devastating hacks in the history of the internet. Many security firms and programmers regard it as the largest distributed denial of service attack ever. Starting in March 2013, Spamhaus, a Geneva, Switzerland-based website that was supposed to prevent spam, was attacked by hackers using nearly 100,000 servers.

Massive sections of Europe lost connectivity and speed when this happened. Even worse, the attack continued for days. Some sources claim the hack was carried out by CyberBunker, a hosting company in the Netherlands, with the intention of shutting down Spamhaus simply because they didn't like them.

It would make sense to see why an adult would hack something, but what if I told you that in this hack, it was a 15-year-old? Mmm hmm. Now it's real. Jonathan James was a 15-year-old teenager who hacked into the DoD (Department of Defense). In July of 1999, he accessed over 3,000 messages between the DTRA employees there.

He also compromised the systems that controlled the physical environment on the International Space Station. This caused NASA's computers to shut down for around three weeks, costing $41,000 to remove James' code and fix the systems.

After being released, James became nervous about other cyber crimes being blamed on him, so he committed suicide in May of 2008.

Sony, a Japanese company known for making games and movies, was ready to release a new film titled The Interview in 2014. But on November 24 of the same year, Sony Pictures became the victim of what some people say is one of the worst hacks of all time. A well-planned hack caused multiple computers to be infected with malware, releasing around 100 terabytes of data. It included things such as salaries and employee information.

To this day, no one has been caught. It is kind of sad to see a film fail at the box office because it's actually really funny.

Heartland was known as a credit card processing company based in New Jersey. On November 20, 2009, it was announced that their network had been hacked. They claimed the cyber attack happened on multiple occasions, between the day after Christmas 2007 and the day it was announced.

According to the US government, over 130 million credit cards were hacked and compromised, and Heartland claimed they lost $2.6 million. The group that led this hack included German hackers and a 28-year-old named Albert Gonzalez. Don't worry, they have been caught.

Alright, I guess another 15-year-old hacked as well. What has this become? The boy, named Michael Calce, was a cyber genius who hacked and shut down some of the most popular websites. Between an 8-day span in February 2000, he launched several distributed denial of service attacks, shutting down popular websites like Amazon, CNN, Dell, and eBay. He even managed to take down Yahoo at one point.

Calce called this operation "Project Rivolta" and considered it too easy. What's even funnier is that he sat down to watch Goodfellas one day, only to have the police knock on the door. He was eventually sentenced, quite the way to go out.

The Conficker Worm was first discovered in early November 2008. It targeted the Windows operating system by exploiting vulnerabilities in the code, linking to other systems to create a large net controlled by the worm's creators. It went on to infect millions of computers worldwide, including the French Navy computer network and 100 German Armed Forces systems.

To this day, no arrests have been made. A $250,000 bounty for whoever catches the hacker remains unclaimed. Fun Fact: Conficker is actually a combination of a German curse word and the word configure.

Back in the late '80s, the internet wasn't widely known. But on November 2, 1988, a Cornell University graduate student named Robert Tappan Morris created a digital worm virus that could break into any computer on the web. It would report back its existence, mapping out a large network. Launched from a computer at MIT, the virus ended up self-replicating and infecting thousands of systems.

Even though it was designed to be non-damaging, it caused computers to slow down severely. According to sources, the attack caused a total of $10 million in damage.

This hacker not only scammed a company big time but also helped people steal the identities of over 13,000 people. In March 2012, a global company, Experian, bought a company called Court Ventures to help with their specialization in credit and marketing services. But a Vietnamese man named Hieu Minh Ngo used his skills to pose as an investor to the security of Court Ventures. Thanks to this, he gained access to millions of people's personal information and made nearly $2 million.

Despite being arrested in 2013 and sentenced to 13 years in 2015, the damage was already done.