World’s Most Harmful Hacking Groups
Nowadays hacking is a common issue. With the rise of computers and ever-changing technology, hackers have become a strong presence in modern society. The very first hackers emerged from MIT in 1969.
Today we will discuss some notorious hacking group which is infamous worldwide.
Anonymous:
Anonymous, originating in 2003, Anonymous was created as a group for people who fought for the right to privacy. This is probably the most recognizable hacking group on our list. Known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Anonymous group has been behind some of the largest hacks of the 2000s. It was founded in 2003. Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology.
At the height of its popularity, in 2012, Anonymous had been a network of thousands of activists, a minority of them hackers, devoted to leftist-libertarian ideals of personal freedom and opposed to the consolidation of corporate and government power. But after a spate of arrests, it had largely faded from view.
Tailored Access Operations, NSA:
The Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). TAO identifies, monitors, infiltrates, and gathers intelligence on computer systems used by enemies and friendly foreign entities. It has been active since at least 1998, possibly 1997. According to General Michael Hayden, it was structured and named as TAO after the last days of 2000. This group is NSA's top-secret offensive security unit, a specially designed hacking group This group's purpose is cyber welfare and cyberespionage. This consists of more than 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers. It is the most important component of the NSA's huge Signals Intelligence Directorate.
Elderwood Group and 20 other Chinese APTs: is a suspected Chinese cyber espionage group that was reportedly responsible for the 2009 Google intrusion known as Operation Aurora. Operation Aurora" is the latest in a series of attacks originating out of Mainland China. Previous attacks have been known as Ghost Net and Titan Rain. This group mainly targeted defense organizations and many human rights and non-government organizations. This group is considered the second Chinese hacking group. They started their attack in mid-2009 and started a continued attack in December 2009 but they publicly disclosed on 12 January 2010. At that time when Google published them then, Google stated that over 20 other companies had been attacked and more than 34 organizations were targeted. The Elderwood group was named by Symantec after a source-code variable used by the attackers.
APT28 (Fancy Bear): Fancy Bear is a Russian cyber espionage group. Also known as APT28 (by Mandiant), Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group (by Kaspersky), send it, Tsar Team(by FireEye), and Strontium (by Microsoft), etc. The name "Fancy Bear" comes from a coding system security researcher Dmitri Alperovitch uses to identify hackers. Fancy Bear is thought to be responsible for cyberattacks on the German parliament, the Norwegian parliament, the French television station TV5 Monde, the White House, NATO, the Democratic National Committee, the Organisation security, and Co-operation Europe, and the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.
Dragonfly: The energy sector in Europe and North America is being targeted by a new wave of cyberattacks that could provide attackers with the means to severely disrupt affected operations. The group behind these attacks is known as Dragonfly. The group has been in operation since at least 2011 but has re-emerged over the past two years from a quiet period following exposure by Symantec and several other researchers in 2014.
This “Dragonfly 2.0” campaign, which appears to have begun in late 2015, shares tactics and tools used in earlier campaigns by the group. The Dragonfly group appears to be interested in both learning how energy facilities operate and also gaining access to operational systems themselves. A similar group emerged in 2015 and was identified by Symantec as Dragonfly 2.0. There is debate over the extent of the overlap between Dragonfly and Dragonfly 2.0 but there is sufficient evidence to lead to these being tracked as two separate groups. it was targeting airline and defense sectors, usually in the US and Canada.
Tarh Andishan: In 2009, Iran was left with a badly compromised and diminished computer infrastructure after the widely publicized Stuxnet worm attack. Iran responded by elevating its hacking capabilities from simple website defacement to full-blown cyber warfare. Thus, a state-sponsored hacker group dubbed Tarh Andishan(Thinkers or Innovators in Farsi) was born. Tarh Andishan’s hacker group is a huge problem for the United States& because their attacks are based on different malware development tools & programming languages and adversary techniques that target prominent agencies& military installations such as US Navy servers and airlines and airports and chemical companies.
Ajax Security Team/ Flying Kitten Iran: Ajax started out in 2010 as a group of “hacktivists” and website defacers from Iran, but they went from activism to cyber espionage and outing of political dissidents. They deny being state-sponsored, but many believe that they were hired by the Iranian government.
Syrian Electronic Army: They were the Syrian government’s elite cyber militia. It is a group of computer hackers that first surfaced online in 2011. it has targeted terrorist organizations, political opposition groups, western news outlets, human rights groups, and websites. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe. The organization hijacked prominent social media accounts and defaced and blocked access to websites. Two of the men are also accused of extortion.
One of the suspects - Peter Romar - has already been arrested in Germany.
The US Department of Justice says it believes the other two - Ahmad Umar Agha and Firas Dardar - are in Syria.
There are many other hacking groups which also infamous in the world. They are-
The Different Hacking Groups, Chaos Computer Club, Homebrew Computer Club, Legion of Doom, Masters of Deception, Lizard Squad. Morpho, Bureau 121. b
-MEHBUBA (IT DEPARTMENT,2 MINUTE KNOWLEDGE)