The Max Headroom Hack

• When Hack Happened: November 22, 1987
• Who Did It: Unknown

The Max Headroom hack is legendary in the hacking world. Originally invented in the 1980s, “Max Headroom” was a sentient yellow artificial intelligence from the movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future. The character had a unique look, with a weird electronic voice. This unique nature made him relatively popular as a cult icon for years. Fast-Forward a bit to November 1987. A man in a Max Headroom mask began taking over TV networks.

He interrupted broadcasts, insulted sportscasters, and even made fun of Dr. Who. It all added up to several minutes in total, and everyone knew the networks were being hacked. The jokes became pretty well-known, but people wanted to know who was responsible for the hack. Several investigations took place but all came up empty. The person or persons responsible are still at large. Whoever did it, we hope they know they are responsible for one of the funniest hacker attacks ever.

Security Expert Sends Warning To Thousands Of Printer Owners

• When Hack Happened: February 2017
• Who Did It: Stackoverflowin

One man, who happened to be a security expert that went by the fake name “Stackoverflowin,” saw a major security flaw in several printers. Due to this, he wanted to make sure to send the many owners of these specific printers a warning. Knowing that he could hack into them, he decided to do just that in February 2017. Interestingly, this came right after a study was published online showing how certain printers allowed attackers to access them over the internet.

They were able to do this because the printers kept ports open by default. The man exploited this exact problem and sent out messages to around 150,000 printer owners. He sent them messages that automatically printed out whenever the printer turned on for use. Some of the messages were of artwork. But most were simply warned, with the line: “for the love of God, please close this port.” This is one of the funniest hacker attacks ever, but also the nicest. He could have done much worse.

Operation Payback

• When Hack Happened: December 2010
• Who Did It: Anonymous Hacker Group

Anonymous was rightly upset with the United States Government in 2010. The American government demanded that Wikileaks stop releasing top-secret diplomatic cables to the public. Several companies supported Wikileaks in the past but with the government now against them, they were too. They froze accounts and shut down the site’s servers at one point. The owner, Julian Assange, was furious over this. The companies in question were Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, PostFinance, and even Amazon.

Anonymous was mad as well that the government would do this, but also that these companies pushed away and refused to do business with Wikileaks. In December 2010, Anonymous decided to take down both Visa’s and MasterCard’s websites. Called Operation Payback, many found it to be one of the funniest hacker attacks ever, as Anonymous showed these businesses what it was like to have business come to a halt. But things then started to spin out of control, with Anonymous taking down numerous other anti-piracy opponents along with the others with targeted DDOS attacks.

Data Stolen In A “Fishy” Way

• When Hack Happened: 2018
• Who Did It: Not Revealed

Darktrace, a cybersecurity firm, managed to uncover something pretty odd. They found that hackers were using an internet-connected fish tank to steal data from a yet to be identified North American casino. The tank was properly equipped with IoT sensors, which were connected to a PC that monitored and regulated the temperature and even the cleanliness of the tank. It even kept up with feeding the fish.

Justin Fier, Director for Cyber Intelligence & Analysis for Darktrace, claimed: “Someone used the fish tank to get into the network, and once they were in the fish tank, they scanned and found other vulnerabilities and moved laterally to other places in the network.” The team traced back the tank’s owners to Finland. They even found that an incident in London was also done by the same team, and allowed them to get a foothold in the casino’s network, to begin with.

Man Makes Everyone His Friend On MySpace

• When Hack Happened: 2005
• Who Did It: Samy Kamkar

We feel bad discussing this one. While it is one of the funniest hacker attacks ever, it involved a man wanting more friends. MySpace is now like the abandoned amusement park of social media networks, but it used to be the most notable one. Everyone knows that once you created an account, the site’s founder, Tom, became your very first friend. Therefore, everyone was friends with Tom. But at one point, many became friends with Samy Kamkar too.

In 2005, Samy decided that he would exploit a vulnerable spot in MySpace’s security, and created the fastest spreading computer virus to ever exist. Within just 1 day of his move, the virus he installed infected roughly one million pages on the site. Of course, his attack did not have any major nor harmful effects. Except those exposed were forced to send a friend request to Samy Kamkar’s MySpace account. They also had a message displayed on their page that reads: “but most of all, Samy is my hero.” Samy is now a top security researcher.

Man Hacks Company, Blackmails Them For A Job

• When Hack Happened: 2010
• Who Did It: Attila Nemeth

A man named Attila Nemeth wanted to work for the Marriott International Security Firm. It has been said that he attempted to get hired by them in the normal way, but the Hungarian hacker had no luck. Therefore, in 2010 he decided to transmit a malicious code into the company’s network. Marriot knew they had been hacked, and Attilia threatened to do more damage unless he was given a job with the company.

Yet this is what makes it one of the funniest hacker attacks of all time. Marriot decided to respond to Attila, and set him up with a fake employee account and the promise of a job, just as he demanded. This prompted Nemeth to send over his resume, passport, as well as other specific identification. Of course, this was then passed on to the United States Secret Service who took action against the 26-year-old hacker. He ended up being sentenced to 30 months in a Maryland prison.

Operation Didgeridie & Operation T**storm

• When Hack Happened: 2009 & 2010
• Who Did It: Anonymous Hacker Group

Back in 2009, the nation of Australia proved how inept they were when it came to the internet. They planned to push heavy censorship, which most citizens hated. They even wanted to try to ban all possible “adult entertainment,” if you know what we mean. Anonymous caught wind of what the government wanted to do, then decided to launch Operation Didgeridie. An odd name, but perfect for this specific situation. One year later, in 2010, they launched Operation T**storm.

The two hacking projects were very specific. The first was a DDOS Attack on the Prime Minister’s website, which only took the site down for about an hour. The second, however, was a major attack. Anonymous shut down the Australian Parliament House website and even caused problems for Australia’s Department of Communication. Both of the latter hacks came with crazy demands, which focused heavily on Australia’s ban on adult entertainment. It was the first time Anonymous was seen as a true “hacktivist” or vigilante group that fought for the rights of man.

The World’s Very First Tech Hack

• When Hack Happened: 1903
• Who Did It: Nevil Maskelyne

The year was 1903 and the “father of the modern radio,” Guglielmo Marconi, was stationed on a cliff. He was preparing to show off his version of the modern telegraph to the Royal Academy of Sciences. As Marconi was reading his fingers to send a message more than 300 miles across airwaves, his machine began pulsing strongly on its receiving end. The decoder managed to spell out “RATS” several times before the machine started getting random limericks.

The first was “there was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.” Although not bad when read, it was pronounced quite rudely. More random quotes began to follow. It was found that a wireless engineer called Nevil Maskelyne was behind the hack. He worked for the Eastern Telegraph Company and did this hack for a reason. He claimed that telegraph messages weren’t private, which he proved to be true. Eventually, the telegraph died off when “telephones” came to be.

 

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

BBC

CNBC

Slate

The Guardian

The Atlantic

Washington Post

Wired

Vice

Gizmodo

Mashable

Los Angeles Times

Huffington Post

Politico