Cyberattacks continued to wreak havoc across industries in 2024, resulting in significant disruption to organizations and critical services. As in previous years, vast amounts of personal data have been stolen by hackers, which is often sold to other malicious actors or used to blackmail victims.
See also: LKQ says cyberattack led to data theft
Notable issues in 2024 included rising ransomware attacks on healthcare, a sector that is no longer “off limits” among cybercriminals. Below are the top 10 cyberattacks of 2024.
LoanDepot attack disrupts mortgage payments
On January 8, one of America's largest retail mortgage lenders, LoanDepot, revealed that it had been hit by a major ransomware attack, forcing it to take some of its systems offline.
Mass exploitation of Ivanti zero-day flaws
In early 2024, researchers observed a massive exploitation of critical zero-day flaws contained in Ivanti products.
Volt Typhoon penetrates critical US infrastructure networks
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced on January 31, 2024, that a law enforcement operation disabled hundreds of routers in an effort to thwart a cyber espionage attack conducted by the Chinese state-run hacking group Volt Typhoon.
Ransomware attacks on Change Healthcare
In February, reports emerged that US healthcare payment provider Change Healthcare had been hit by a ransomware attack. The cyberattack caused delays in prescriptions and other healthcare services for patients across the country.
See also: CERT-UA: Warns of phishing attacks targeting Ukraine
MediSecure data breach exposed 13 million Australian health records
A ransomware attack on Australian prescription drug provider MediSecure in May led to a breach of personal and health data of 12.9 million people.
NHS cancels operations after Ransomware incident
A ransomware attack on a critical service provider to UK NHS hospitals, Synnovis, resulted in thousands of procedures and appointments being cancelled over the summer months.
Snowflake attack led to multiple data breaches
In June 2024, Mandiant researchers warned that a threat actor had stolen a significant amount of customer data from the Snowflake data storage platform.
The City of Columbus Hit by Ransomware
The city of Columbus, Ohio, revealed that it had been hit by a ransomware attack in July, resulting in outages to some IT services.
Cyberattack causes chaos at Seattle airport
A cyberattack in August 2024 on Seattle Airport, a local government agency that oversees the Port of Seattle and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), disrupted travel to and from the state ahead of the U.S. Labor Day holiday.
See also: GenAI and cybersecurity: What do security professionals think?
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US officials' data breached by Chinese espionage campaign
A major espionage campaign by Chinese-affiliated threat actors has compromised the data of US government officials through a large-scale breach of telecommunications providers.
Source: infosecurity-magazine
