Paris (AFP)

From the paralysis of the Estonian internet network in 2007 to that of an American oil pipeline last week, a look back at fifteen years of cyberattacks:

- Estonia, the first affected state -

In the midst of diplomatic conflict with Russia, Estonia was the first state to be hit, in 2007, by a major cyberattack, which paralyzed its internet and banking network for several days.

Tallinn accuses Moscow which denies it.

- Iranian nuclear fleet hacked -

In 2010, the powerful Stuxnet virus hit Iran's nuclear program with full force, infecting several thousand computers and leading to a series of failures in their fleet of centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

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Stuxnet, which attacks software from the German Siemens used for the industrial management of companies, also affects India, Indonesia, Pakistan and China.

This attack, attributed to Israel aided by the United States, is considered the first known cyberattack targeting an industrial system.

- Yahoo!

in the tournament -

Yahoo!

was hit in 2013 by the biggest cyberattack in history.

All of its three billion user accounts are affected.

The American Stock Exchange policeman fined Altaba (formerly Yahoo!) $ 35 million in 2018 for covering up the attack, revealed in 2016 and revised upwards in 2017.

- Sony attacked -

In 2014, the American film studio Sony fell victim to acts of massive piracy, which led the company to cancel the release of “The interview that kills!”, A comedy about a fictitious CIA plot to assassinate the northern leader. -Korean Kim Jong-Un.

Washington attributes to Pyongyang, despite its denials, the computer attack, one of the most serious and spectacular ever suffered by a company.

- The targeted American military command -

In January 2015, hackers claiming to be part of the Islamic State group briefly took control of the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US military command in the Middle East (Centcom).

Two months later, a group posing as the "ISIS Hacker Division" posted a list of 100 American servicemen to be killed.

- Electoral interference -

In October-November 2016, tens of thousands of stolen messages from the Democratic Party and those close to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were posted online.

The American intelligence agencies accuse the group of hackers "Fancy Bear", linked to Russian intelligence, of having interfered in the election in order to favor Donald Trump, elected candidate.

The name of the group "Fancy Bear" (or APT28) also appears in France, according to the daily Le Monde and specialist researchers.

He would be at the origin of the dissemination on the internet just before the second round of the presidential election in May 2017 of thousands of internal documents from the entourage of the future President Emmanuel Macron.

- WannaCry: Global "ransomware" -

In May 2017, the world suffered an unprecedented cyberattack, affecting 300,000 computers in 150 countries.

The attack is launched via "WannaCry", a "ransomware" (contraction of ransom and software, "ransomware" in English), which locks users' files, demanding money to recover their use.

"Wannacry" exploits a flaw in Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Among its many victims, the British health system, a factory of the French car manufacturer Renault or the Spanish operator Telefonica.

- The SolarWinds flaw -

At the end of 2020, hackers succeeded in getting SolarWinds, a publisher of remote monitoring tools, to issue tricky updates to its Orion platform, which opened a loophole in the victims' networks, allowing data to be exfiltrated as e-mails.

The attack continued for months, affecting up to 18,000 customers and more than 100 US companies.

In April 2021, Washington announced financial sanctions against Moscow, which it blamed for the attack.

- Microsoft hacked -

In March 2021, Chinese hackers managed to collect the confidential data of 30,000 American organizations - including cities, businesses and institutions - by exploiting a flaw in Microsoft's Exchange business email.

- DarkSide paralyzes an American oil pipeline -

At the beginning of May, a hacking brought about the paralysis of one of the largest American oil pipeline operators, Colonial Pipeline, which transports nearly 45% of the fuels consumed on the east coast of the United States.

US authorities blame the attack on DarkSide, a group of cybercriminals believed to be based in Russia.

Moscow denies any involvement.

The boss of Colonial Pipeline announced a few days later that he had paid a ransom of 4.4 million dollars (3.6 million euros) to hackers.

© 2021 AFP