Did you know that the first-ever cyberattack in history took place back in 1988? It was called the Morris Worm, created by Robert Tappan Morris. The most fascinating part? It managed to affect 10% of the entire internet at that time! Just imagine what 10% of today’s internet would mean…

Interestingly, Morris didn’t intend to cause harm — the worm was originally written to measure the size of the internet, but due to a coding error, it spiraled out of control, slowing down and crashing systems. Out of roughly 60,000 devices connected to the internet back then, around 6,000 were affected — including major institutions like MIT, Harvard, and even military networks.

The incident pushed the U.S. government to establish the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) in 1989 to ensure faster, more coordinated responses to cyber threats.

Since then, cyberattacks have grown more complex, more frequent, and far more destructive — often without the public realizing the true scale of the damage. Let’s take a look at some of the most notorious creative cyberattacks that made history and cost millions — or even billions — worldwide:

1. One of the Largest Corporate Breaches: Yahoo Data Breach (2013–2014)

Between 2013 and 2014, Yahoo suffered a massive data breach affecting around 3 billion accounts — including emails, passwords, and security questions. The full scale wasn’t revealed until 2016, drawing heavy criticism for delayed disclosure and poor crisis communication. The attack led Verizon to cut its acquisition price for Yahoo by $350 million, showing how a single cyber incident can devastate even the world’s biggest tech companies — both financially and reputationally.

2. The First Major Attack on Industrial Systems: Stuxnet (2010)

Believed to have been designed to damage Iran’s nuclear facilities, Stuxnet was a sophisticated worm that targeted industrial control systems (ICS). Code-named Operation Olympic Games, and allegedly developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, it secretly manipulated uranium enrichment centrifuges — making them speed up or slow down erratically while appearing normal from the outside. The result? Permanent damage to Iran’s centrifuges and the dawn of a new era in cybersecurity, military strategy and global cyber warfare and defense strategy. Stuxnet showed that digital attacks could now inflict physical damage — and it inspired countless attacks in the years that followed.

3. WannaCry Ransomware Attack (2017)

In May 2017, the world faced one of the most widespread ransomware attacks ever: WannaCry. Using a leaked NSA exploit (EternalBlue), it spread across networks like wildfire — infecting over 200,000 devices in more than 150 countries. Hospitals, telecom operators, factories, universities, and government institutions were all hit. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was severely impacted, leading to canceled surgeries and widespread disruption.

Victims were asked to pay a Bitcoin ransom (around 300 BTC) to regain access to their files — but decryption was never guaranteed. The attack caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and was later linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

4. SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack (2020)

The SolarWinds attack of 2020 stands as one of the most sophisticated and far-reaching supply chain attacks ever recorded. A Russian-linked group known as “Cozy Bear” inserted a malicious backdoor into a legitimate software update for SolarWinds’ Orion platform. Thousands of organizations — including U.S. government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and global enterprises — unknowingly installed the infected update, giving attackers access to sensitive systems like Microsoft 365 and cloud infrastructures.

The fallout reshaped cybersecurity worldwide. SolarWinds had to redesign its entire software development process, while the U.S. mandated Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) documentation for federal systems. This incident also accelerated the global shift toward the Zero Trust Security Model — a framework built on the principle of “never trust, always verify.”

In today’s digital era, cyber threats no longer come just from lone hackers, but from highly organized, state-sponsored groups. Cybersecurity is no longer just a technology investment — it’s a sustainable strategy, a culture of awareness, and a collective responsibility.

So, how prepared do you think even the largest corporations are for these complex, organized cyberattacks? And if a hacker were to infiltrate the systems holding our most sensitive data — what would happen next? How much do we really trust the digital tools we rely on every day?