Cyber Attacks

In 1988,  Robert Tappan Morris developed The Morris Worm, a program to assess the size of the internet. This program would invade the web, insert itself on other computers, and then record the number of copies made. The worm would eventually damage approximately 6,000 computers. The cost to repair ranged between $100,000 and $1 million or between $201,000 and $2.9 million. Morris was then charged with computer abuse and was sentenced with fines, 3 years probation, and community service. 

In this case, the first Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was an accident. Morris struggled to create a perfect program and instead created a worm that crashes computers. It could have been prevented if it was tested more before publishing it to the web. More tests would give a better idea that The program is running smoothly without any glitches or slow links.

Another attack that occurred called The JP Morgan Chase, compromised 76 million households and 7 million small businesses in the summer of 2014. The hacker gained access to names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails of the account holders. The privacy of all of the households was invaded and the families that were involved were problem terrified of being so exposed. A stronger malware can be created to help prevent these attacks from happening. 

Even though stronger malware is a slight improvement but its hard to tell when households have weak points that make them easier targets such as having antique computers, a user using the same passwords for multiple accounts, or maybe all traffic was used in one port. All making it easier for a hacker to attack a system.