It is perfect to assume that there will be no perfectly good year, ever, for computer security. The Internet world will never run out of hackers with their destructive hacks and security breaches. Unluckily, these hackers have been throwing a lot of security attacks this year.

1. Yahoo’s 500 Million and One Billion User Account Data Breach

Yahoo is known as one of the biggest company living on the Internet today. Sadly, in September this year, the company made a new record for holding the “largest theft of personal data from a major technology company ever.” The hack has been hovering for two years before its revelation this year.

But that’s not all for Yahoo, because in mid-December, Yahoo revealed that a separate hack occurred around August 2013 and is reported to have leaked the data of one billion users around the world.

2. Ransomware. Ransomware everyware.

The threat of ransomware is becoming widespread among corporations, with almost half of U.S. businesses suffering an attack from the nasty form of malware recently, according to a new survey.

Why is this bad? As per PCWorld, ransomware is a kind of malware that encrypts your data so you cannot use it. If you want to use your data, you got to pay them some money. There’s even a ransomware, called “Ranscam” that takes your money and deletes your data anyway.

3. Dyn DDOS Attack

Your internet browser cannot really read “google.com” or “facebook.com”. They need Domain Name System or DNS to translate “google.com” into 172.217.24.142 in which your web browser understands. Without DNS, your web browser cannot find the website you want to see.

On late October, there’s an army of bots, called the Mirai botnet, that attacked Dyn, a company who controls DNS infrastructures leading into a massive site blackout in Europe and US. Sites affected includes Twitter, the Guardian, Netflix, Reddit, CNN and many others, reported The Guardian.

4. Apple stops patching QuickTime

This year, Apple decided to deprecate QuickTime for Windows because of the discovery of two critical vulnerabilities in the software. Users of QuickTime on Windows machines are recommended to uninstall the software.

5. Distributed guessing

Credit Card Fraud has been made easy by the use if Distributed Guessing. Guessing the expiry date of a valid card isn't all that difficult: Cards are typically issued for five years at most, so sending the 60 possible values to different websites will get a confirmation from one of them. The three-digit CVV is a little harder, involving spreading 1,000 requests across multiple websites.

6. DNC hack

This is the hack that exposed nearly 20,000 emails and thousands of attachments from DNC staffers. One of the biggest email exposed is the allegedly emails from DNC that tried to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ campaign in favor of their frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

7. Russian hackers infiltration of major U.S Political Parties

Central Intelligence Agency and other American intelligence agencies claimed that the Russian Government, in possibly direct involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has possibly infiltrated the computers of major U.S Political Parties to affect the US Presidential Election.

Russian election interference "is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results," Reid wrote in a letter to the FBI.

8. The San Bernardino iPhone

The iPhone belonging to one of the terrorist in the attack of San Bernardino, California has hit the headlines, the FBI wanted Apple to create special software to allow investigators to get into the phone. Apple refused as the software to be made would be a “custom-build malware” that could undermine the company’s own security features.

The FBI eventually requested help from a security firm and was able to help investigators access data on the phone.

9. NSA hacked

A group of hackers called “Shadow Brokers” reportedly obtained hacking tools from “Equation Group”. Shadow Brokers tried to sell the hacking tools, which has the capability to hack into NSA treasure trove.

10. SWIFT Hack

SWIFT, or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications endured several attacks to its transaction software. These attacks include an $81 Million attack against a Bangladeshi Bank. Eventually, SWIFT seek for help from outside security professionals to stop further malware attacks.

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