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What's a cyberattack? -

They are attacks made from one or more computers, toward another computer, group of computers, or network.

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Types of attack -

There are mainly two types of cyberattacks. Those intended to disable the computer or network, and those made with the intention of gaining access to data.

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How hackers attack computers - Hackers use a variety of methods to conduct cyberattacks. They can operate alone or in groups, launching coordinated attacks.

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E-mail is still a vulnerability - According to CSO, 92% of malware (viruses, trojans, worms) is delivered by e-mail.

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Morris Worm - In 1988, an American student created a worm that morphed into a virus, infecting about 6000 computers.

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Morris Worm - The estimated damage was US$10 to US$100 million.

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MafiaBoy - In 2000, a Canadian 15-year-old high school student known as 'MafiaBoy' launched a  distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on number of websites. 

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MafiaBoy - The attacked websites included Amazon, CNN, eBay, and Yahoo!. The attacks resulted in an estimated damage of US$1.7 billion.

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Google China - In 2009, hackers targeted Google servers allegedly to access Chinese human rights activists' emails.

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Google China -

The Chinese government was suspected of being behind the attack. In 2010, Google relocated its servers to Hong Kong.

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Jonathan James - Another 15-year-old boy named Jonathan James was able to hack into the US Department of Defense, gaining access to a large amount of confidential data.

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Jonathan James - This allowed him to steal NASA software worth US$1.7 million. The systems were impacted for three weeks, costing NASA US$41,000. Jonathan James took his own life in 2008.

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Phone lines blocked to win car - Kevin Poulsen hacked into Los Angeles' telephone services so that he could win a car on a radio competition.

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Phone lines blocked to win car - He successfully blocked any other callers and eventually won the car. He was later sentenced to five years in prison.

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Scientology - In 2008, a group of young hackers launched a cyberattack on the Church of Scientology website, reportedly because they were against the religion.

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Scientology - This was just one of many attacks by the group known as 'Anonymous.'

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Solar Sunrise - Three teenagers from California attacked around 500 government and private computers that were running the Sun Solaris operating system.

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Solar Sunrise - The US government first suspected that Iraqi operatives were behind the cyberattack.

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Melissa virus - The Melissa virus infected Microsoft Word documents and spread via email. 

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Melissa virus - The virus has reportedly caused about US$1.1 billion in damages worldwide.

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2002 internet attack - An attack on all root servers in the US almost stopped the internet.

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2002 internet attack - This was one of the most complex cyberattacks in history, and could have had disastrous consequences if it had lasted for more than one hour.

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Credit card galore - In 2009, Albert Gonzalez managed to steal millions of credit card numbers from over 250 financial institutions in the US.

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Credit card galore - Gonzalez then reportedly spent US$75,000 on a birthday party. This is still the biggest card fraud in history.

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Paypal - In 2010, Paypal restricted the account used by WikiLeaks to raise funds. 

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Paypal - As a result, several individual users boycotted Paypal and hackers launched an attack on the company. The estimated damage was approximately US$4.5 million.

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Stuxnet - An Iranian nuclear facility was attacked by a worm called Stuxnet. The attack destroyed 1000 nuclear centrifuges.

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Stuxnet -

Iran blamed the United States and Israel for the attacks.

See also: 30 top online scams you need to know about

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