5 Most Damaging Online Hacks Of 2016
"Power belongs to the people that take it."
Following huge success and unanimous critical acclaim for
its first season, Mr Robot returns this month with the much-anticipated Season
2 released on Amazon Prime. Starring Rami Malek as he reprises his role as
troubled genius hacktivist Elliott Alderson, Season 2 delivers even more brooding
suspense and drama as Elliott’s persistent paranoia and overpowering cynicism
towards global powers and the corporate elite becomes even more intensified.
Working as a cyber security engineer for a software company Allsafe, Season 1 introduced Elliott as a mentally unstable but highly talented computer coder. Severely introverted, and suffering from social anxiety disorder as well as depression, his view of the world is heavily skewed by a sense of delusion and conspiracy. Approached by a mysterious technological revolutionist known simply as Mr Robot (Christian Slater), Elliott is asked to join his team of hackers – fsociety – tasked with infiltrating and attacking the servers of one of the world’s largest corporations e-corp in order to re-establish perceived social justice and fairness through the eradication all dept.
A gritty, moody, and pessimistic examination of the use and vulnerability of online systems in today’s technological age, Mr Robot highlights not only the efforts which go in to protecting data but also the advancing threats to all our personal identity and safety online.
Data is not the only thing at risk however in a world where increasing services and tasks are carried out remotely via the power of the Internet. Focussing on what effects hacking could have on different tasks tech site Motherboard.tv have put together a new series called 'Can We Hack It?’ In the first episode the show looks at how the use of surgical robots could be hampered by external attacks. Designed by Applied Dexterity, the RAVEN II surgical robot has been designed to be operated by doctors across great distances and in the harshest environments.
Whether it is treating soldiers on the frontline or patients in hard to reach third world locations, the potential benefits of the RAVEN II are obvious. What isn’t so clear is how susceptible it is to a denial of service attack, and what that could mean to someone being treated. In order to find the answer a team at Biorobotics Lab were tasked with doing just that – hacking the robot mid op. You can watch the full episode above to see what happened, or head on over to Motherboard.tv for to see the full series of 'Can We Hack It?'.
With the return of Mr Robot we though it might be interesting to look at some recent examples of real world hacking. Click next to see what was found as 5 most damaging online hacks of 2016…
5. The Clinton Campaign - 5,000,000
Hillary Clinton’s campaign network was breached by hackers targeting several large Democratic organisations in July. Nick Merrill - Hilary Clinton’s campaign manager - confirmed the hack in a statement. “An analytics data program maintained by the DNC, and used by our campaign and a number of other entities, was accessed as part of the DNC hack. Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised,”
The FBI in a statement to the New York Times said that they ‘‘Working to determine the accuracy, nature, scope of these matters.’' As you can imagine this more than slightly damaged Hillary's campaign, with reports asking the question that if Clinton can’t keep her campaign safe, how can she keep the country safe? Luckily for her the furore has somewhat relented as Republican opponent Donald Trump's string of politically controversial statements continues to overshadow the Presidential race..