Cybersecurity retrospective 2024: remember the worst attacks, intrusions and bugs

The year 2024 has been active in the field of cyber security. Every month we are affected by news about new incidents such as data leaks, system intrusions and compromises of entire company services.

In addition, it was observed that forms of attacks that were already on the rise, such as ransomware, continued during this period. Victims ranged from large corporations and government systems to Brazilian citizens who registered on a digital platform.

THE TecMundo selected some of the main cybersecurity events of the year, including attacks and some controversies.

The retrospective also serves to identify trending topics that will likely be in the news again in 2025.

Attacks and invasions

The year has not been a peaceful one in terms of cyber attacks on companies and public institutions. Numerous incidents of systems crashing and services damaging have been recorded worldwide, both in terms of the number of targets and the severity of the attacks.

Disney was one of the giants affected. In July, approximately 1 TB of the company’s internal data was obtained, including conversations about projects in development and other corporate matters. The popular and important Wayback Machine service has also suffered greatly from cyber attacks; It was closed twice in October and operated on a limited basis for several weeks.

For several months in 2024, the US government has recorded a possible invasion of the country’s telecommunications networks by hackers of Chinese origin on a large scale and still without concrete data. Several operators would have been affected, and even the FBI began recommending the use of this attack. safer messaging apps for the population.

Among the notable cases in Brazil is an attack on the systems of Marisa store chains in November. Medusa ransomware “locked” access to internal services and even caused some brick-and-mortar stores to experience temporary problems.

In October, São Paulo State Essential Sanitation Company (Sabesp) was the target of an attack that caused instability in the internal network. Claiming responsibility was the RansomHouse group, which failed to receive payment requested for the release of the systems.

Apart from ransomware and social engineering attacks, October witnessed the largest DDoS attack in history; This attack was neutralized in time by services such as Google, Amazon and Cloudflare, but impressive numbers were achieved. After all, There were 398 million requests per second (RPS) to access pagessomething made possible by exploiting a protocol vulnerability.

Major data leaks

Leakage or commercialization of data, which is one of the main consequences of unauthorized entry into the internal systems of companies or governments, will continue to be a trend among digital threats in 2024.

Probably the most serious case occurred in the United States: in August, the information of almost 3 billion people was exposed, including social security numbers, which are equivalent to our CPF. THE TecMundo It was exclusively revealed that the person responsible for obtaining 277 GB of data was a Brazilian hacker.

In November, the banking data of 250,000 Brazilians from personal loan companies was leaked in a forum; This has increased the already large amount of personal information about citizens obtained from various sources.

National BMW customers were harmed by a leak that included victims’ monthly income. The malware also led to the disclosure of personal data of Brazilians who were found to have shared child sexual abuse material.

The year was still difficult for Pix. It is already the most popular payment system in the country. At least ten customer key leaks from different institutions were recorded throughout the year, reinforcing the public’s need for caution. The most serious incident occurred in Qesh in September; Registration data for 53,383 Pix keys was exposed, including username, CPF, institution, agency and account number.

Other important events occurring in 2024 include:

Arrest, blackout and exile

In addition to the mentioned cases, the field of digital protection, privacy and system integrity also left its mark on other events that left their mark on 2024. Perhaps the most memorable occurred in July: a “cyber blackout” caused by incidents of non-compliance in the services offered by the company CrowdStrike.

As a result, systems for many important services went offline for days, damaging banks and airports. Largely due to Windows-related issues, fixes took days to implement and losses ran into billions of dollars.

Another shocking news occurred in April. The hacker known as VandaTheGod was arrested in Bahia, suspected of being responsible for the largest data leak in Brazil. In the same month, the government announced that it was the target of diverting funds from the ministry in the amount of R$ 3.5 million due to irregular changes to the transfer system.

The ban of cyber security company Kaspersky in the USA also surprised the public. In June, he announced that he was closing down his activities in the country following accusations that he posed a risk to national security due to his Russian origin.

One of the news that had the biggest impact in Brazil in the middle of the year was positive: The country became the first to get Android’s Anti-Theft Detection feature, which reduces potential losses from cell phone loss.

In November, a bug at Brazilian fintech Nubank made news because it allowed customers to withdraw money from ATMs “for free”; This was an issue that could even become a legal headache for those involved.

Some of these trends are expected to continue rising for 2025. Check out here what is required for truly safe browsing and how to maintain good cybersecurity practices in your daily life.