Can you see how cybersecurity has evolved through the years? Also, how did it change the lives of people? Let us find out here.
How Cybersecurity Has Evolved Through the Years?
1983
The first virus, Elk Cloner, was released. It was a boot sector virus and it infected Apple II computers.
It was co-written by Richard Skrenta and his brother. They had released it as a joke. The infection rate was 1% and that is why people called it a joke back then.
1989
The Morris Worm infected 6000 computers and created a huge mess as it brought down the Internet for a few days. The worm exploited a security hole in the Internet’s Unix operating system.
Even though the worm was not malicious. It caused huge havoc as it slowed down Internet operations.
1993
The first spam messages were sent. A computer science student at the University of California, Berkeley, Tom Gruber.
It was the first to send spam messages.
The messages contained advertisements for other students’ computer projects.
It was an annoyance by the users. Gruber was also arrested but later he apologized for his mistake and he even became the founder of Siri.
1999
SQL Slammer was one of the biggest attacks in history. It used a buffer overflow exploit to take down the Internet operations.
The virus attacked Microsoft SQL Server databases and it spread like wildfire causing $1B in damages worldwide.
The virus infected 75,000 servers within 10 minutes and brought down the Internet for a short while. It was the biggest ever attack in history and it took a long time to fix it.
2004
The Melissa virus was the first mass-mailing worm. It infected 30 million PCs and caused $80M in damages worldwide.
The virus exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook and automatically sent itself to everyone in the victim’s contact list.
2009
Conficker was the largest botnet in history at that time. It consisted of about 9 million computers and it used a Windows vulnerability to compromise its targets.
The vulnerability was back to Microsoft’s Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 and it infected millions of PCs worldwide.
The virus infected system files and other software on the infected computers. It even launched Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).
It became the largest online threat ever.
2010
Stuxnet was the first malware to use a computer virus for political purposes. The virus was discovered in 2010 and it targeted industrial systems, especially centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.
It was developed by the United States and Israel to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.
These are just some of the major events in history that brought about the growth of cybersecurity. We cannot see how far this will go but we can surely say that it will continue to evolve with time.
Why is Cybersecurity Important?
Cybersecurity is important because it helps us secure our most sensitive data. It is an important part of our daily lives.
The Internet has become our second home. We use it for everything that we do. We connect with people online, we buy things online, we work online, and we live our lives online.
So, if Internet security is not good, then the whole world is in trouble.
